Wastewater - to drink or discharge, lessons from Tauranga
Annual Conference
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Tauranga City is planning a $106 million, 14.5 kilometre wastewater interceptor to transfer wastewater from growth areas to the south and central of Tauranga City across town to an existing wastewater treatment plant. This interceptor sewer is known as the Southern Pipeline Project (SPP).
An external peer review of the SPP considered that a satellite Southern Wastewater Treatment plant (SWWTP) designed to produce near drinking qub ality water, which would discharge to a small inland stream, should be further evaluated.
The expected benefit of the SWWTP compared with the SPP was that a treatment plant could be staged over a number of years and would reduce risks associated with unplanned growth, avoid high upfront costs, avoid construction disruption from a pipeline and provide an opportunity for reuse of reclaimed water.
The SWWTP would have an ultimate capacity of 12,000 m 3 /day ADF and to achieve the desired output quality would use a BNR/MBR/RO treatment process.
The SWWTP option was evaluated and detailed cost estimates were prepared, including holistic costing of all potentially affected facilities to 2051, so that an equal comparison could be made with the SPP. If adopted the SWWTP would have been the first of its type in NZ.