Residents living near Ledger Goodman Park say periodic smells from Motueka’s main wastewater pump station are disrupting daily life and they want Tasman District Council to take a more proactive approach.
The pump station, located in the park at 2 Ledger Avenue, periodically emits strong odours that neighbours say force them indoors and deter people from using the popular green space.
The park borders Ledger Avenue, Goodman Drive and Kingston Place, and includes a food forest and a children’s playground. The pump station was constructed in 1949, with a major upgrade in 2004, and handles about 80% of Motueka’s wastewater.
Feebee Newlands, who has lived near the park for four years, says she became increasingly aware of how serious the problem was, both through her own experience and from speaking with others in the neighbourhood.
She called a meeting at the park in early April to give residents a chance to air their concerns.
“We’ve got a really beautiful neighbourhood who look after one another – the only problem is the pump station.”
One resident, who has lived near the park for 15 years, told the group that on many occasions while walking his dog, “the smell was so putrid, we just had to leave”.
Others spoke of being unable to hang out washing or leave windows open when the smell drifts through the area.
Feebee says she has also spoken with a woman who bought a property bordering the park, only to find her quality of life so badly affected that she sold the home a year later.
Council documents, which are regularly updated on their website, show more than a dozen odour complaints about the site have been made so far this year.
A council spokesperson says the odour is managed through filters installed in 2019 in response to earlier complaints. The filters are designed to treat wastewater odour emissions in three stages before being released into the atmosphere.
Feebee says that neighbouring residents are also reporting health concerns, including headaches, nausea and insomnia. The council says air quality is not currently tested, as odours from sulphides, the main components of sewer gases, are difficult to measure.
A spokesperson says New Zealand does not have a National Environmental Standard for hydrogen sulphide, and councils instead rely on the Ministry for the Environment’s ambient air quality guidelines. Testing focuses on odour nuisance rather than toxicity.
The issue came into sharper focus during last year’s floods, when high water volumes caused stormwater to overflow into the wastewater system. Sewerage spilled onto the street and several bores were contaminated.
Feebee would like to see pump trucks used in the area when heavy rain is forecast, to reduce the risk of flooding and contamination. She says there are a lot of elderly and vulnerable people who have become “hugely anxious” about weather events.
David Oliver recently bought a section on Ledger Avenue and says the issue has become a major source of stress.
He describes the site of his future home as “just perfect” but says it is hard to imagine living there on days when the whole street smells like a toilet.
“I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve laid awake thinking, ‘Should we just bail out of this and build somewhere else?’”
Both Feebee and David say they accept relocating the pump station is unrealistic. The council has indicated this would require a full pipe network restructure, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and taking decades to complete.
Instead, residents are asking the council to take a more proactive approach by changing carbon filters more regularly, installing remote air quality monitoring, and ensuring stormwater and wastewater systems cannot overflow into each other.
David says the current system is one that is “completely reliant on complaints”.
“People are people, but the system isn’t robust. The system is fragile.”
The neighbourhood group has made a recent submission to the council’s annual plan and has spoken at the Motueka Community Board and Environment Regulatory and Operations Committee meetings.
“I think we’ve got a serious problem that needs sorting out, once and for all,” Feebee says.
