Wellington Water has replaced the biofilter at Lower Hutt's Seaview Wastewater Treatment Plant in an effort to combat the foul odours that have been emanating from the facility. Photo: Google Maps
A Lower Hutt resident hopes Wellington Water is doing enough to rid the area of the foul stench emanating from a wastewater treatment plant.
The agency, which is jointly owned by local councils, service provider Veolia, and the Hutt City and Upper Hutt councils were fined more than $40,000 in December 2023 for breaching consents in relation to the smell at the Seaview plant.
Wellington Water has replaced the biofilter at the plant ahead of schedule, which it said was already improving the smell. It was expected to be fully effective within the next two weeks.
Hutt City Council has also included $13 million towards further odour improvements at the wastewater treatment plant in its long-term plan.
Seaview resident Robert Wills said he was pleased the biofilter fix had been made but he questioned how it had been done so quickly.
"How could it have been done so quickly? What corners were cut along the way to make this happen? With the documentation supplied, the biofilter is supposed to take some time to bed-in so how quickly did they push all this through? Why couldn't they have just done it when it was due, rather than waiting until we all complained about it?"
Wills said there was still a strong odour at his house, and he hoped the biofilter would make a difference soon.
"What I really feel sorry for is the businesses that are in close proximity to it, and the Juicy Fest which is on tomorrow. The Facebook comments that I've seen in regards to that particular event was, 'take a gas mask with you'."
Friday's hip-hop and R&B concert, Juicy Fest, at Hutt Park is only about 500 metres from the treatment plant.
But Lower Hutt mayor Campbell Barry told Morning Report concert goers could be reassured they were going to have a good time at Juicy Fest.
"This has been an on-and-off issue. You may get a little bit of a whiff but there's nothing major like what has been happening in the last couple of months".
He said the smell would not give the international acts a bad impression of Lower Hutt.
"No, I think T-Pain is ready to perform some bangers and I know there is a lot of people excited to head along to the concert."
Barry said the stench over Seaview had been a problem for more than a decade.
The smelly odour in the area recently had been a result of repairing the rundown biofilter, he said.
"My focus now is the longer term solution to fix the smell, which does get bad at points quite often still. So that's not going to stop completely. But of course, how bad it's got in the last few months shouldn't happen again."