Soakage Guidelines Preparation - Easy or Not?

Matamata Piako District Council have placed into statute a District specific Stormwater Policy to provide clear guidance and performance standards for stormwater control associated with all forms of development and land use changes.

The preparation of a District specific Soakage Design Procedure and Guideline Manual as a design tool was an important step in completing the supporting documents for this policy and providing a clear guideline to those developing lots and subdivisions. This is particularly so in locations like Matamata where growth pressure is in tension with a flat landscape with no immediately adjacent watercourses for stormwater disposal.

It shouldn’t be too hard to get together a few standards and other examples, and everyone knows how to design for soakage? But when we started to undertake this the different soakage assessment methods, design procedure techniques, preferences and standards, created a inconsistent palette to start from, and everyone has an opinion, seldom the same.

Is E1 /VM1 a suitable guideline for soakage disposal to prevent off site effects, not just to protect your own floor?

This paper will look at the challenges in preparing this guideline, some of the inconsistencies of existing guidelines and standards, and discusses what can be learnt.