Published as Issue No. 65
13 March, 2013
Cleaning up Houghton Bay and Lifting the Creek: Cleaning up the leachate pollution in Houghton Bay by preventing water from runoff and springs going into the large drainage pipe carrying the former creek down Houghton Valley is under consideration. Local, Jenny from Hungerford Road, staff members from Capacity (the Council owned organisation responsible for water supply and drainage) and Island Bay scientist John Robinson, met on site on Monday to consider the next stage of a feasibility study for this ambitious project.
Jenny has provided the report below; further information attached is from John Robinson, Paul Glennie from Capacity and Ian of Buckley Rd. Grant from Hungerford Rd has created this visual, which shows the idea of capturing clean water run-off in an open channel to avoid it going into the pipe and adding greatly to the volume of polluted water in Houghton Bay.
Various ideas are being explored and others sought. We will be happy to publish comments in the next newsletter.
Regards, Grant and Norman
Jenny wrote: “The top priority for the Council is to prevent the leachate contamination of Houghton Bay. However, Houghton Valley residents want any solutions to this problem to work towards an ideal rather than just a quick fix. Ideally, the tip leachate needs to be permanently directed to the sewer system, and the storm water and fresh water to the beach and sea. Possibly the fixing of the leachate problem will not be fully accomplished without addressing the separation of storm and spring water all the way up the valley, but any steps taken should have a sustainable end point in mind.
If we build a new jumping weir system above Jacob’s place, then at that point the low flow contaminated water could be directed to the sewer system. The current leachate pipe below this point could then be cleaned out and converted to a storm water and overland water system only, which ends up at the beach. The wetland would act as the changeover point. This would keep all the storm water system below the current weir intact and save digging any new pipes (and wrecking the new roundabout!!)
Then, for (hopefully a brief) interim, the high flow could be directed into the larger pipe as currently happens.. Then above Jacob’s place, work could begin on reducing the storm and spring water influx into the leachate pipe by separating them out – creating the wetland and running the clean water overland in a stream channel, working progressively up the valley. (But if the piped runoff system can be devised to cope with untoward water events, then a wetland may not be necessary, and thus save some costs.) The new weir system could monitor the amount of high flow events and as the storm water load is reduced there would eventually be a tipping point where the leachate would be going permanently into the sewer.
Whether this stops the mystery discharges I don’t know, but if we can at least get the spring water above ground and then going down the pipe to the beach, it may keep the pipe clean and not build up any contaminants to create the concentrated discharges.”
Attachments missing:
Stormwater discharge issues.pdf
Further background Information and other comments and perspectives.doc