Mayor Phil Goff has said housing and transport are his top two priorities for the next three years. He has also said, “I think Aucklanders accept that we have to invest in clean and safe beaches.”
He thinks! Well he better start thinking again because Aucklanders will not put up with health hazardous effluent continuing to pollute our harbour. That, as wastewater biologist Gemma Tolich Allen says, reverts Auckland to "second world status". She was commenting on a test in Kelmarna Avenue (which drains into Cox’s Bay) showing E.coli at 190,000 cfu/100ml, more than 1500 times the upper safe limit and a serious threat to human health. “Those levels are dangerously high,” Tolich Allen reported.
Goff seems to be saying let housing development continue, transportation progress be made, and put a peg on your nose to block out the stench of sewage in the creek near your home.
Contamination in our waterways can cause gastroenteritis and respiratory problems, but other experts have added hepatitis, giardia, cryptosporidiosis, campylobacter, and salmonella to that list.
This is shameful and inexcusable. Show us you can lead when it counts, Mayor Goff.
The Super City still has 16,000 homes where stormwater and wastewater are not separated, and is leaving them in the lurch.
Councillor Mike Lee calls their attitude "wilfully irresponsible." The Super City’s first 10-year plan earmarked $797 million to complete the Central Interceptor pipe by 2022. That would take most sewage across Auckland to Mangere.
By the time of the second long-term plan in 2015, the cost had risen to $966 million, with completion by 2025. Even that plan would only take 80% of effluent.
And now the spin goes on and on. The council and Watercare argue the toss, throw conflicting statistics around, prevaricate on any real decisions, and the raw faeces continues to flow into our harbour.
The sensible solution, for health and safety reasons at least, would be to stop the discharge pronto. In the meantime don’t exacerbate the problem by prioritising housing and transport over our city’s wellbeing. The world’s most liveable city - what a bad joke!
What does it say about our reputation when visitors are confronted with signs prohibiting use of our harbour, at least for swimming, for shellfish and just wading with the kids? You only need to go for a walk along Parawai Crescent, off Richmond Road, near Countdown, to smell the sewage. The stench lingers all over the Cox’s Bay area.
As the Herald on Sunday recently reported, “road congestion is only the most visible sign of stress on its networks. Below ground there is even greater stress. Drains need fixing before more houses are connected to them.”
Watercare and the council maintain that it is only when it rains that sewage is deposited in Cox’s Bay, and they admit that happens more than 50 times a year. They claim that there is wastewater capacity in dry weather. That has been proved wrong by local residents who had a sample tested on a fine day, when no rain had fallen for some days. The result was 34,000 cfu/100ml - 68 times the safe level. Kate Stanton of Kelmarna Avenue and her neighbours were told that this constant flow was probably groundwater. Their answer to that suggestion was categoric, “It doesn’t smell like groundwater to us.” They compared the fluoride level in their sample with tap water, and the discharge they had tested by Watercare. The only possible conclusion - E.coli consisting of human or animal faeces. A few local cats and dogs are not the problem.
So Kate Stanton and neighbours are beside themselves with frustration. As Kate says, “The Kelmarna overflow now overflows every day, all day, not just when it rains. Addition of new buildings housing hundreds of people will add their sewage output to the overflow every day, as the output pipe is already full. Each litre put in these pipes adds a litre to the overflow.”
Stanton goes on to say, “Many other outflows are cleared from the harbour by four-six tides. Cox’s Bay does not clear, ever.” The toxic portion of the harbour is getting bigger and bigger.
No Auckland City ratepayers want higher rates, and Mayor Goff has pledged to hold increases to 2.5% a year. But he still insists that housing intensification must go on. Surely the council should not be consenting buildings which will add large numbers of people to a catchment where more raw sewage in the harbour will be unavoidable.
Councillor for Waitemata, Mike Lee, has been on the case. He recently said this: “We are forging on with infill and high-rise (development) in an area when we know it’s environmentally reckless.”
Watercare chief executive, Raveen Jaduram told Mike Lee in an email that “the council was allowing developments to occur knowing there was no adequate stormwater system, and this would result in more frequent spills.”
The answer seems simple enough to me. Start building the new Central Interceptor which will take discharges underground to Mangere, now.
Allow no more housing intensification in the meantime near the 16,000 properties still connected to a combined stormwater and wastewater network.
And that includes the unwanted new development proposed on the Gables site as part of the government’s highly questionable SHA scheme. (JOHN ELLIOTT)
Sign the petition at www.gng.org.nz