Lyttelton Harbour Wastewater Project 

Kia ora from the Lyttelton Harbour Wastewater project team. 

We're putting the final touches to the new wastewater scheme that will redirect all of Lyttelton Harbour's wastewater to Christchurch's main treatment plant in Bromley.

However, we’re now expecting to finish this project in late 2021, not early 2021 as previously planned. This is because we’re still waiting for several key mechanical parts to arrive from overseas before we start testing and commissioning the entire new wastewater network.

We’re still on track to have the system pumping wastewater to Christchurch by the end of 2021.

We thank you for your continued patience as we complete this project, which is an important environmental milestone for our city.

Highlights around the Harbour

Governors Bay

The pump station at Governors Bay has been pumping treated wastewater through to Lyttelton since 2019. The final works for this site will allow us to bypass the treatment plant and directly pump untreated wastewater to Lyttelton. Then we'll convert the treatment plant into a buffer tank, which is designed to temporarily store wastewater during periods of high rainfall.  

Diamond Harbour

The Diamond Harbour station is ready to go. The next stage is to pump the wastewater from here to Simeon Quay. Once the wastewater is being pumped to Simeon Quay, we will convert the treatment plant here to a buffer station.

Cashin Quay

The Cashin Quay pump station is ready to go. We have new pipes feeding directly back to the Simeon Quay pump station and once works are completed there and the station is commissioned, we will start pumping from Cashin to Simeon. We've already built one of the buffer tanks, and will build the second one once the station is commissioned. 

Simeon Quay

We are still testing the pipelines and pumping equipment in this station to ensure it is able to take the challenge of pushing all of the Lyttelton Harbour’s wastewater over the hill to the Bromley treatment plan. These pumps are 8 meters long and weigh 2.5 tons each.

Heathcote pipeline

The last remaining works on this pipeline are almost complete. COVID-19 global supply chain delays have impacted on the supply of some construction items, which the team are working through. The last of the works in Alport Place include placement of the automatic pinch valves in the newly constructed chamber, followed by some landscaping around this important control structure. These electronic pinch valves could be described as a 250 kilogram tap that manages the flow from Lyttelton.

The works new chamber connecting the tunnel pipeline and the Heathcote pipe line is under construction and will be bought to site soon. These works are on Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency land and won't impact any community activities. 

Commissioning

One of the biggest parts of this project is the commissioning of the whole system. We have to check all the construction items have been completed and that all the alarms we have in place work. These alarms are for a range of things such as high water levels, the temperature of the pumps and can even tell us whether some hatches on site have been opened.

Since these pump stations are some  distance away from Christchurch, we have to be able to control all the stations remotely. So we need to check that we can run the stations from the Bromley Treatment Plant before using the system. We test all of this by running clean water through the pipes first, so if something isn’t quite right then we don’t affect the environment.

Thanks for your patience

Thanks very much to the local community around Lyttelton Harbour and Heathcote for their support and patience during this project.

Contact us

If you have any concerns about our work sites, you can ring Fulton Hogan on 027 604 9335 or 027 616 3929, or contact Council on 0800 800 169 to report any issues. 

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