Far North town wins battle to stop effluent getting into water

A Far North town is celebrating a milestone in its 40-year battle to stop sewage ending up in one of the country's most historically significant harbours.

Four wastewater treatment plans serving five towns - Kaikohe, Rāwene, Kohukohu, Ōpononi and Ōmāpere - all discharge treated sewage into the Hokianga Harbour.

Nowhere, however, is it more controversial than in Rāwene, where the town's effluent ponds empty into a wetland that then drains into the Ōmanaia River, just upstream from the historic harbourside town.

Locals have long fought to have treated wastewater discharged onto land instead, an option successive councils have dismissed as too expensive or too difficult.

Last week, however, the Far North District Council bought a 10-hectare block of pine forest across the road from the town's sewage plant, with the intention of using it for land-based disposal.

The land adjoins a 2ha property the council acquired earlier.

While consents and infrastructure could still be years away, locals are hailing the land purchase as a milestone and proof of a turnaround in council attitudes.

Dallas King, hapū kaikōrero for Ngāti Kaharau and Ngāti Hau ki Hokianga, said the fundamental issue was that human waste should not be discharged to water.

"That's not just a Māori issue. I don't think any person in any culture or any community thinks it's a good idea. No one likes human faeces in water, particularly where they live, swim, gather kai moana, or vest their identity."

Water was supposed to be treated before it was discharged from Rāwene's sewage ponds, but in practice King said that did not always happen.

"When there's high rainfall, untreated human waste is coming out of that plant. And when there's no rainfall during the summer, those ponds then turn into the perfect breeding ground for masses of toxic algal bloom, which then get discharged into our harbour."

Adding insult to injury, the Hokianga was not just any harbour - as the place where the great explorer Kupe Nuku first made landfall in Aotearoa, it had huge significance to the nation.

Worse still, Rāwene's wastewater plant was built on a wāhi tapu known as Te Raupo.

King said huge gatherings took place at Te Raupo even during European settlement, making it the local equivalent of Parliament.

Meetings involving as many as 3000 people and 80 waka had been recorded.

However, later authorities put the land to other uses.

"They put an abattoir, or a killing house, there, and an urupa or cemetery, a rubbish dump and a wastewater treatment plant for human faeces. I don't think you could possibly defile land in any more ways."

Rāwene resident Janine McVeagh, who literally wrote the book about sewage in the Hokianga, said the town's battle for better wastewater treatment went back decades.

Her own involvement began in 1982 when an earlier consent was granted.

"To begin with, it was the Hokianga County Council, and their attitude was, 'We want to pay as little money as possible and do the easiest thing, and we're allowed to put it in the harbour, so we will'. Then we had a period of time when the mayor famously said to me on a phone call, 'I just wish all you Hokianga would go and jump in your harbour and I wouldn't have to deal with you anymore'."

One of the turning points came in 2013 when local residents won an appeal in the Environment Court.

The judges ordered the Far North District Council to work with Te Mauri o Te Wai, a group bringing together hapū and community representatives, to come up with an alternative treatment system.

But McVeagh said real change started a few years ago, with new council staff, new councillors and a new mayor. They ushered in a change of attitude, she said.

Last week's purchase of the pine block for land-based disposal was "a complete game changer".

"It takes everything away from the harbour, never to go in there again. And sure, there'll still be water, but it will filter down the hill, through the soil, and it will go back into the harbour, clean."

McVeagh said getting the consents and building the infrastructure for land disposal would take time, but other changes would take effect within months.

As an alternative to the failing pond-based treatment system, a state-of-the-art electrocoagulation system - which used an electrical current to separate waste from water - had been installed at Te Raupo.

The new equipment was on site and could start operating as soon as power was connected.

Initially it would be used to treat water from the second pond before it was discharged into the harbour.

Once the land-based disposal system was ready, the electrocoagulation plant would be moved across the road to the new site.

It would then treat wastewater before it was discharged onto land.

Solar panels had been purchased to offset the new system's power use.

McVeagh said the cost of the new treatment system would not fall on ratepayers because, at the community's instigation, the council had obtained $1.1 million in "Better Off Funding" distributed as part of the previous government's Three Waters scheme.

The electrocoagulation plant had cost about half that.

King said she couldn't wait to start planning the wastewater plant's move off the wāhi tapu.

Hapū and the district and regional councils could then work together to restore Te Raupo.

King said each town around the Hokianga had to come up with its own wastewater solution, but hoped Rāwene would serve as a tauira, or exemplar, of what was possible.

While the battle had been long and was not yet over, King said she never doubted Hokianga would prevail in the end.

"I always knew that it would come. Whether it came for me or the generation after me was a question, but I always knew it would come."

The Far North District Council would not say how much the land had cost, expect that it paid market value following an independent valuation.

Head of infrastructure Tanya Proctor said the council had also budgeted for land purchases in Kohukohu and Opononi-Ōmāpere, and was currently looking for suitable sites.

Further north, in Taipā, in Doubtless Bay, a consent had already been obtained for land disposal, but no money had been allocated in the current Long Term Plan (LTP).

A budget would be allocated once a suitable site had been identified, she said.

The sums set aside in the 2024-27 LTP for land purchases for wastewater discharge are: Kohukohu, $817,600; Ōmāpere/Ōpononi, $1,022,000; and Rāwene, $313,950.

The council is also planning to upgrade its Kaikohe sewage treatment plant, and is investigating land-based disposal options.

Treated water from the Kaikohe plant flows into the Hokianga Harbour via the Wairoro Stream.

As well as its great significance to Māori, the Hokianga Harbour boasts some of New Zealand's earliest European settlements, its first boatyard, oldest pub (though that title is disputed), oldest stone bridge, and the site of the country's first Catholic mass.

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