Waipā District Council awards largest contract package

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Group manager service delivery Dawn Inglis and the council's water services manager Martin Mould at the existing wastewater treatment plant in Cambridge. Contracts for a replacement plant have been let.

Waipā District Council has committed to its biggest contract package – more than $86 million – to build a new wastewater treatment plant for Cambridge.

The plant will receive, treat and discharge wastewater from Cambridge, Leamington, Hautapu and Karapiro Domain. It will replace the existing plant in Cambridge west which has been operational since the late 1970s but will struggle to meet increasingly stringent environmental expectations.

Group manager service delivery Dawn Inglis said the new plant will cope with Cambridge's fast-growing population and also meet much higher environmental standards and commitments to the Waikato River.

"Our existing plant receives wastewater, treats it and then discharges it to land before the water travels to the Waikato River as groundwater. While this form of treatment has been accepted in the past, environmental standards are now much higher," Inglis said.

"We also have higher aspirations and legal obligations to the health of the Waikato River. The new plant will treat wastewater to a very, very high standard using specialised membrane bioreactor technology. It will be one of the most advanced plants in New Zealand and something to be proud of."

A resource consent application was lodged with the Waikato Regional Council and is now being publicly notified. In the meantime, based on the consent being granted, contracts have been let for:

● Specialist inlet works equipment design, manufacture, delivery and commissioning and staff training (to Spirac Pty Ltd)

● The supply and commissioning of membranes and peripheral equipment (to Veolia Water Technologies and Solutions)

● Plant construction (to Spartan Construction).

In total, the three contracts are valued at just more than $86m from a total plant budget of around $100m.

Inglis said the new plant will look entirely different to the present, taking up just one-third of the existing footprint on the 37-hectare site near the Waikato River. Unused land on the site that is not required for the new plant will be remediated and put to other use. Biosolids will be taken off-site for reuse as compost via a third party. The new plant will include its own solar farm to generate enough energy to power the plant during the day.

Work on designing a new plant to service Cambridge began in 2021. From the outset, the council has worked alongside a Kaitiaki Advisory Group and a community group to ensure community and mana whenua expectations are met. Early construction work is expected to begin next month, with works completed and the new plant up and running by June 2026.

Inglis said construction of the plant aligns with work undertaken jointly by Hamilton City Council, Waikato District Council, Waipā District Council and tangata whenua on developing a detailed business case for future wastewater solutions across the Waikato sub-region. That work has already identified the need to upgrade the existing wastewater plant at Te Awamutu. Work on an upgrade for the Te Awamutu plant is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2035.

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