Source: Radio New Zealand
Local musician and community advocate, Rebecca Robin, said the meeting with council staff in Bromley on Tuesday night got heated. RNZ / Nate McKinnon
A Christchurch woman says she walked out in anger more than once from a community meeting about a putrid-smelling sewage plant.
Offensive odours have plagued the city’s eastern suburbs after a fire destroyed the Bromley Wastewater Plant in 2021.
But the latest stench has locals complaining of nausea and headaches – and residents have been driven indoors.
Christchurch City Council said the recent heavy rain had affected the health of the oxidation pond, and it was using all available tools to improve water quality.
The council has been approached for comment.
Local musician and community advocate, Rebecca Robin, said the meeting with council staff in Bromley on Tuesday night got heated.
She said residents felt their suffering had been dismissed, and she wanted to see the stench treated as a public health issue and for there to be on-the-ground support.
“People are angry, they’re worried about the health effects, they’re not getting any immediate relief,” Robin said.
“I’m hoping this meeting has made them want to do more of a health response for people, rather than telling them to call their GPs or nurse practitioners. They need to be out here knocking on doors and checking on people.”
Robin said while some people could escape the smell, others couldn’t, and there was a financial cost to the odour for those who could no longer hang out washing.
“People [are] going, ‘Hey, we need to go to the laundromat,’ and … I think the point they’re missing is that the laundromat costs money.
“All of those things, they add up.”
Linwood Ward councillor, Yani Johanson, who represents the Bromley suburb, was pushing for a register to record residents’ stench-related health issues, and also for free medical visits.
“Fundamentally, cost is a barrier. Why should this community, who are suffering, have to pay to go and see a doctor, when through no fault of their own, they’re getting sick?”
He said the stink was not new, but the social and well-being response had been missing for years.
Johanson believed the commitment to establish a team focussed on supporting people was a step in the right direction.
A council information sheet given to meeting attendees included comment from National Public Health Service medical officer of health Dr Annabel Begg.
She said exposure to hydrogen sulphide odour from the plant could cause nausea, headaches, eye and throat irritation, skin irritation, sleep disturbance, and worsening asthma symptoms at relatively low concentrations.
“If people exposed to the odour don’t experience physical health effects, continued exposure to unpleasant or nasty, noxious odours can still have an adverse effect on people’s mental wellbeing,” she said.
Begg said long-term health effects were highly unlikely, but said those experiencing health issues should seek advice from their healthcare provider.
The information sheet included the details for free services – Health Improvement Practitioners, Pae Ora ki Waitaha Support, and Healthline.
The council said the recent stench was likely the result of a combination of high-levels of rain and changing wastewater loads arriving to the ponds.
It said the temporary plant had a narrow margin for error and while the ponds were showing signs of improvement, the recovery depended on algae growth.
The council said it was reviewing the data to see if factors other than weather and “high load” were factors in the stench, and was using every tool available to improve the health of the oxidation ponds, including using jetboats to increase dissolved oxygen.
It said replacing the fire-damaged trickling filters with an activated sludge reactor would fix the odour issues. The programme was expected to take three years, with commissioning targeted for 2028.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
