28 October, 2024

Generator still pushing sewage uphill as residents long for joined-up council thinking

Makeshift mess… Jacque Mercieca stands by a black pipe carrying sewage pumped from the fenced-off pit behind her. A generator (at rear) runs 24/7 to keep the operation going on a right-of-way down from her home and others.

A Castor Bay couple and their neighbours are living with a makeshift sewage pipe on their right-of-way, as damage caused in floods early last year remains unrepaired.
Jacque and Joe Mercieca are desperate for a permanent infrastructure fix, but say this would need Auckland Council departments Watercare and Healthy Waters to work together. “They throw it back and forth,” Jacque says.
A temporary solution installed by Watercare has been in place for nearly 21 months. It involves a generator running at all times, a holding pit and a pump connected to a rubber pipe. The pipe carries sewage up the steep drive to meet a sewer main over the road and down the ridge. “Neighbours hear the chugging,” says Jacque, pointing out where the pipe runs close to a window.
Another neighbour further down the drive lives with the generator running just over the fence from his vegetable garden.
The Merciecas’ own home is tucked off the drive, but it is at the bottom of their section that the trouble started. This was where floodwaters gushed from a Healthy Waters stormwater pipe into a creek, scouring out its bank and dislodging an underground Watercare sewerage pipe.
The fallout has upset the peaceful sense of home they have enjoyed on the property for 30 years, overlooking native bush in a gully. Destabilised land around the creek has continued to slip and crack, raising fears for their swimming pool above.
Jacque said they realised the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods of 2023 caused enormous damage to many. They were speaking out because the impact was ongoing for people like them and the community as a whole. “We’ve neglected the infrastructure and that’s what made the beaches not safe to swim in,” she said.
The public might not see what is underneath the ground, but that was where ratepayer dollars needed to be directed. Joe said infill housing was adding to network strain.
The couple credit Watercare for being quick to set up the sewage bypass a matter of days after the flood. But they said it was around 10 years ago when they first contacted Healthy Waters, asking it to slow the flow of stormwater that led to the washout.
Joe said part of the problem for individuals like them was council could dispose of stormwater over private property.
The couple showed the Observer where the council pipe drops water into the creek on their land. In heavy rain, “it comes out like a rooster’s tail”, said Joe.
Jacque’s take: “It comes screaming through here at 100 miles per hour.”
Their original idea was to place boulders in the creek to slow the water along its length of around 100m before it channelled back underground. “My frustration is, if they had put the boulders in, I don’t think it would have happened,” Jacque said.
Now the creek their three children used to easily jump over has widened and subsided to the extent they consider it unsafe for people to go down there. The partially retired couple are paying for geotechnical reports to establish the safety of the slope above. “We’re going to get our land stabilised, but it won’t stop the continual undermining,” Jacque said.
She understood a recent council report indicated the creek was at bedrock, but cracks above would continue to open.
Watercare contractors have told the Merciecas they hope to bring a 10-tonne digger onto the land to lay a new underground sewage pipe. Trees will be cleared and replanted. This comes on top of Watercare having paid to have the generator checked daily and replaced once.
They fear unless Healthy Waters is involved at the same time as Watercare, any fix will be half-done, with risk remaining.
Jacque accepts fully undergrounding the creek would likely be very expensive, but said the cost to date had already been too high. A Healthy Waters problem had caused the Watercare problem, she said.
“The dream outcome would be to do our stabilisation at the same time as Watercare does work, and that Healthy Workers also reduces the risk, by slowing down the flow, so it’s not all gouged out.”

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One council arm acts… the other’s hands-off

Watercare says it will spend around $1 million to fix sewerage issues on and near the Merciecas’ property, but Healthy Waters says it has no immediate plans for work in the area.
The Watercare project will start next month and take about three months. It aims to replace the wastewater pipe washed out in floods in January 2023 before Christmas.
A new 80m section of polyethylene pipe will be laid away from unstable land around the creek at the bottom of the property. Two new manholes and 10m of open-cut pipe are also part of the job.
Watercare said it was not able to supply a figure for the cost of what it had spent already on temporary solutions.
It had not needed to co-ordinate repairs with Healthy Waters.
Healthy Waters head of strategy Andrew Chin said it would monitor the watercourse and respond to any risk of blockages. But it was not planning work on the stormwater outlet or the creek bed. “Under current regulations, it is the responsibility of property owners to maintain watercourses on their land,” Chin said. Pending legislation may change this but, if it did, any possible future work would be years away.

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