Wastewater discharge halts Mahurangi oyster harvesting

RNZ News

8 hours ago

Oyster farmers depend on the Mahurangi Harbour water quality for their livelihood.
Photo:
Supplied / Auckland Council
Oyster farmers north of Auckland are still not harvesting, due to pollution, after this week's rain caused another sewage discharge, affecting the harbour their livelihoods depend on.
Watercare confirmed 135,000 litres of wastewater overflowed into Mahurangi River, which flows to the harbour.
After each overflow, oyster harvesting is put on hold for 28 days to allow for testing.
A Watercare spokesperson said most of this week's overflow would have been rainwater, because it occurred when households were discharging very little wastewater.
"With the wet weather this week, there have been overflows at the Elizabeth St engineered overflow point. It overflowed for five minutes in the early hours of 9 June.
"There were also short overflows on Tuesday afternoon/evening and the early hours of Wednesday."
They said the total volume of these overflows was about 135 cubic metres.
"However, it's important to note that the vast majority of these overflows is rainwater. For example, the overflow in the early hours of Wednesday was from 12.20am to 1.55am, when households are typically discharging very little wastewater."
Farmers in the Warkworth area were concerned Watercare still did not have an urgent solution to stop swimming-pool amounts of sewage being dumped into the water their livelihoods depend on.
About 50 people from the oyster farming community
met with the agency earlier this month
, asking for an urgent solution to the discharges and financial relief. Watercare said it could not provide financial support, but would look at other ways to help the growers.
North Shore MP Simon Watts met with the agency this week and said officials would closely monitor its progress for fixing the overflows.
He said Watercare's chair and chief executive shared their plans to address network capacity constraints in Auckland.
"These constraints are contributing to the issues raised by Mahurangi Harbour oyster farmers and on new housing development, both of which are concerns for me," he said.
"This was a constructive meeting, where Watercare showed me how they intend to bring forward their plans to address these issues."
Watts said this included using the new National Engineering Design Standards currently under development and National Wastewater Standards.
"It's my expectation that Watercare will provide further information on these matters in due course and it is something my officials will be closely monitoring."
A Watercare spokesperson said work was underway to reduce overflows to the Mahurangi River and improve the situation for local oyster farmers - including an upgrade to a bottleneck that would be operational in mid-August.
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