Proposed Trade Waste Bylaw out for consultation

Date:

22 Feb 2024, 12:00 am

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Consultation is now open and closes on Monday 22 April. Click here to find out more and to tell us what you think.

The South Taranaki District Council needs to renew its Trade Waste Bylaw so it can continue to manage trade waste in the District. This summary sets out the why, how and when. We need to have the new Bylaw in place by 30 June 2024.

Background

The Council has eight separate wastewater networks across the District that collect, treat and discharge wastewater. The current Trade Waste Bylaw (2017) needs to be renewed so we can continue to regulate the discharge of trade waste into our wastewater networks by approximately 150 businesses, including six large ‘wet industries’ – businesses that use large quantities of water in processing and then discharge that water with contaminants.

Our Drainage Bylaw covers the normal operation of the wastewater networks and the conditions for connection by domestic households. It also defines what wastes are acceptable to discharge. Trade wastes are covered by a separate bylaw because the Drainage Bylaw does not provide a robust procedure for assessing, managing or monitoring potentially harmful trade waste discharges.

What are we trying to achieve with a Trade Waste Bylaw?

The bylaw is designed to:

protect the health and safety of the community from the adverse effects of harmful substances discharged to the public wastewater system;
protect the environment from adverse effects of trade waste discharges to the public wastewater system;
protect the public wastewater system from damage and provide for its efficient operation;
fairly distribute the cost of dealing with trade waste between households and those discharging trade waste;
meet the requirements of the Resource Management Act, particularly the requirements of our resource consents for the discharge of treated wastewater and the placement of sludge onto land.

Our wastewater system accepts everything our community flushes and washes away. We take wastewater (sewage) from homes, businesses and industries connected to the wastewater system, treat it and discharge it on your behalf. The system is sometimes not able to treat some of the constituents of trade waste and high levels of contaminants such as fat, oil and grease can cause blockages and overflows. This increases the risk of detrimental impacts on the environment, human health and cultural values and is unacceptable in many ways.

We believe the costs of clearing blockages from the networks should be met by those causing them. Before we had a Trade Waste Bylaw, we could spend over $10,000 a year clearing blockages in sewers caused by fats, oils and grease.

There are around 150 trade waste customers in our District, and over 100 are food businesses. While most have grease traps, many of them didn’t appear to be appropriately maintained. There has been a dramatic improvement since our Trade Waste Bylaw was introduced and a Trade Waste Officer was appointed.

It’s not only fat, oil and grease that cause problems. The Bylaw deals with a range of other nasty contaminants and includes trade waste treatment costs to create an even playing field for all trade waste customers through regulation.

The proposed new Trade Waste Bylaw is almost identical to the current one, and its key features are:

All premises discharging trade waste are licensed in one of four categories – permitted, controlled, conditional and prohibited trade waste.
A conditional licence requires premises to test their trade waste and submit a report specifying whether their waste complies. Some controlled licences may also require sampling from time to time.
Non-compliance will be dealt with by prosecution and/or by disconnecting the non-complying premises from our wastewater network.
Each trade premises classified as controlled or conditional is required to apply for a trade waste consent.