Dunedin City Council have been aware for a long time the inefficiency of the old sewerage pipes to cope with days of increased volume run-off from the stormwater pipes. Some downfalls cause flooding in areas of south Dunedin, and around Queens high school, where raw sewage is lying in the streetsw mixed with the overflowed stormwater from drains.
So I am not suprised at all to see this report in the ODT today.
Councils top priorities of city maintenance are roads, sewage, stormwater, and rubbish. Of late there have been many other empire building activities gaining the ratepayers dollars, sucking the cash away from the much needed upgrading of these core services.
DCC Storm and wastewater info
UPDATE 15th october 2009
from the ODT
Dairy farms first, DCC next read more here
"An admission they are polluting is a major first step."
"The city has extremely old stormwater drains."
"day is coming where rainwater has to stop mixing with poos".
"The city has extremely old stormwater drains."
"day is coming where rainwater has to stop mixing with poos".
The city council had a five-year short-term consent for discharges to enable it to come up with a new strategy, but it did not yet have consents for stormwater discharges. Cr Gretchen Robertson said the city council had three years left to come up with a "grand scheme" on how to improve the situation.
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6 comments:
I know my many years in Oz that you cannot dispose of storm water directly to a water body, it must first go through a primary receiver. For risk of contamination you would be unwise to surf in Sydney after a heavy rain event. I have no idea why the Regional Council's in NZ don't manage their storm water systems more appropriately
Finny
Because they would rather spend money on stadiums then waist money on protecting the environment and the publics well-being.
South Dunedin needs to be closed up and move the crew up to the hills as the infrastructure is too old and in time the Ocean will reclaim the whole area anyway.
Why spend ratepaters money protecting people who brought houses at sea level in an area that is reclaimed estuary and massively overcrowded?
And before the Knee jerk reactions fire up,
The insurance council is also making the same noises and who's going to buy an uninsureable house ?
True.Let nature be Nature, but don't pollute nature in the mean time.
I added a link to the DCC website and their storm water ans waste issues which may be informative.
About sea level rise, a council member has told me they are 'budgeting' for a 50cm rise in the next 100 years. Some areas of South Dunedin are only 30cm above sea level now.
the local authorities need to change their attitudes about the beach as for years they treated this as the back yard i.e. just dump all the shit out there, it will be unseen etc. hang on, the beach is our front yard and we need to treat it as such.
with existing consents lapsing within 3 years, could be interesting times ahead.
finny
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