Sanctuary fined for sewage

The body corporate of a Hamilton gated community, The Sanctuary, has been convicted and fined $53,550 for discharging sewage wastewater from its wastewater system into a city stream.

Hamilton District Court Judge Melanie Harland said there were “astounding aspects to the case”.

An overflow pipe from the privately owned wastewater system was discovered discharging wastewater into the Kirikiriroa Stream in north Hamilton in March last year.

The Kirikiriroa Stream flows to the Waikato River.

Waikato Regional Council’s incident response team attended and found the pipe to be discharging about 300 litres of wastewater per hour.

The council could not determine how long the discharge had been occurring, but found that the illegal discharge had been the result of a series of systemic faults that were under the control of The Sanctuary’s body corporate.

The discharge was reported to the body corporate, which took steps to stop the overflow and return the pumping station to proper operation.

Judge Harland said that she was surprised by the complete lack of information about the outlet pipe.

She said that the body corporate was “extremely careless, bordering on reckless” and needed to ensure the wastewater system was properly maintained.

The judge noted that human effluent is normally regarded as more noxious than dairy effluent.

“Clearly, if a stream that feeds into the Waikato River is contaminated with human sewage, this is an offence to all people.”

Regional Council investigations and incident response manager Patrick Lynch said the prosecution served as yet another warning to people who are responsible for effluent systems, whether human, dairy or otherwise, that the system must be fit for purpose and well maintained to ensure there are not harmful discharges into the environment.

See a video of Waikato Regional Council staff discovering the sewage discharge into Kirikiriroa Stream on our Facebook page.