An Assessment of Operational Field Inspection of Wet Ponds and Wetlands in the Auckland Region

In the Auckland region, legacy Councils owned hundreds of constructed wet Ponds and wetlands used for management of urban stormwater. In order to effectively manage these devices it is acknowledged that it is vital to have current, accurate, and relevant asset information. The Auckland Council's new West and North Stormwater Operations Teams identified that the quality and completeness of this information for these assets was not sufficient to prioritise various maintenance actions. In 2011/12 Morphum Environmental was engaged to undertake survey of 126 Ponds/wetlands and report on condition by ranking in terms of priority for maintenance.

A methodology was developed for field inspection and included parameters adopted from Auckland Regional Council (ARC) Technical Publications 10 and from best practice standards. The method standardised the inspection criteria and a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) tool was developed to rank each of the Ponds on 26 criteria. The parameters for inspection included standard design features, such as configuration, but also incorporated ecological components, such as aquatic weed infestation and the quality of riparian habitats.

A Pond Reporting Tool and Database (PRTD) forms part of the electronic deliverables associated with this project. The PRTD includes all data associated with the inspections recorded against asset identification numbers and can be used to view all pictures, videos, and data from the inspections. The results of these pilot study inspections were ranked to provide prioritisation using the MCA tool to be used in developing maintenance strategies.

This presents a method, procedure, and criteria to develop a single information repository for Pond and Wetland asset maintenance and to achieve operational optimisation in the wider Auckland Region.