Planning for the future

A lot has happened over the first half of the Ōpōtiki Wastewater Treatment project. We have completed our testing phase which gave us a significant amount of monitoring data that we have used in the research and evaluation of different treatment and disposal options.

This has helped us to build a long list of upgrade and development options, to further evaluate and whittle down into a shortlist.

What's most important at this stage?

The decisions made about disposal will determine what level of wastewater treatment is required. It is therefore important for our hāpori | community to understand the importance of our disposal options, before we look at treatment options.

Overall, we have evaluated our options on a number of criteria including but not limited to: quality, cost, effect on community, effect on environment and resilience to natural hazards.

In addition, we are also continuing to work with local iwi and hapū to determine the mana i te whenua effects of these options, when viewed as a whole.

The following is a sample list of some of the disposal options we are evaluating.

Some options are less palatable than others, and the list does not indicate any preference currently held by council.

Treatment options

Read more about our current treatment process

The decision of how we dispose of our wastewater will determine the level of treatment required.

Higher levels of treatment usually require more complex technology, more energy, more operational input and more cost.

Regardless of what treatment options we land on, council's priority is to improve on the existing treatment process and make our wastewater cleaner. It then becomes a question of 'how clean do we want to go?'

Because of this layered process, it is difficult to present treatment options at this stage of the project, given we are still seeking feedback on disposal options.

As we continue to progress through the shortlisting process, we will update information on treatment options.