Invigorating Interurban Industry
Annual Conference
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Kerepehi is a rural township located in the Hauraki Plains, 20km northeast of Paeroa. Once a thriving industrial hub, several large factories were based in the town, including NZ Cooperative Dairy Company (now Fonterra) who operated one of the largest milk powder factories in the southern hemisphere. The dairy plant eventually shutdown, and with other industries leaving and the population fell to new lows by mid-2000’s.
Sitting almost perfectly in the centre of the Auckland-Hamilton-Tauranga golden triangle, Hauraki District Council identified the opportunity to re-establish Kerepehi as an industrial hub. After upgrading water supply infrastructure in 2012 several industries began to voice their interest in the township. However, the wastewater treatment plant was still a constraining factor to any development.
The Council owned wastewater treatment plant is a pond-based system, constructed in the 1960’s. It underwent minor upgrades in 2011 with the installation of floating wetlands. Although oversized for the now decreased population base, it operates well consistently meeting its consented limits.
A number of wet industries have expressed interest in locating to Kerepehi. However, these typically produce significantly higher waste streams when compared to domestic waste. To enable Council to invigorate interurban industry, they needed to upgrade the treatment plant to ensure sufficient capacity for any increased load.
Any upgrades needed to be cost effective, since there was still no guarantee that any of the industrial growth would occur. This meant that it was essential to determine an upgrade pathway that would stage capital expenditure and ensure the affordability of the project.
This paper will discuss the process undertaken to develop a cost effective and forward planned upgrade strategy that would allow for a positive financial and social impact. It will present details of upgrades (currently in the final stages of commissioning at both the Council plant and the industry site), and how these maximized the use of existing infrastructure and discuss the challenges that this posed.