A small coastal town, Wai Inu, struggled to cope with an aging water treatment plant and South Taranaki District Council were dealing with a growing number of odour complaints from residents.
The popular holiday spot, 50 minutes’ drive south of Hawera, sees its population swell over summer. As well as affecting residents, the odour problem was not making for happy campers at the adjacent campground.
John Bradford, Hynds Project Manager – Commercial Waste Water and his team were asked to find a solution to the odorous situation which included a couple of difficult challenges.
“We recommended the installation of a new treatment plant which would meet the town’s growing requirements. Being a coastal location, we were working to very strict resource consent compliance conditions on the proposed new plant requiring a high level of performance – including phosphorus removal and UV treatment,” says John.
“The existing plant needed to be decommissioned during the installation of the new plant, without affecting the 30 occupied homes, which meant we had to navigate the situation very carefully.”
The order for the 90m3 Eloy Oxyfix Wastewater treatment plant was managed through Hygrade Water, with the 220-tonne delivery of 26 tanks shipped from Eloy Water in Belgium. Hynds Manukau Branch assisted with the necessary MPI approvals, and stored the tanks prior to delivery on their site. Working with Hynds’ contractors, the tanks were installed over a three-month period.
The result is the largest Eloy treatment plant installed in Australasia.
Not only does the new system allow for seasonal population fluctuations, but a huge bonus is that it can be operated remotely.
“A high level of design and remote monitoring via radio frequency provides real time data to the Taranaki District Council’s system in Hawera. This means the entire plant can be operated remotely instead of making the two-hour return trip,” says John.
“The Council is delighted with the new efficiencies of the plant and the time saving factor to operate it.”
