New Zealand’s Lower North Island is a scenic region with close ties to its large city centre, Wellington. With its temperate forests of Tararua, Pakuratahi, and Aorangi, and lakes including Wairarapa and Horowhenua – it is a region with high biodiversity and communities seeking to maintain ties to their local environment.
Residential developments are integral to growth in the region – and the formation of new parks and reserves supports sustainable outcomes for local developments. Water quality infrastructure is essential to these natural environments – and helps to protect local wetlands, estuaries and waterways from the impacts of pollution.
Developmental guidelines, such as the Wellington Regional Growth Framework, facilitate growth across the region while protecting the region’s natural ecosystems. Capturing urban pollution preserves scenic waterfronts across these iconic areas, ensures clean waterways, and is imperative to protecting Joy in Water for future generations.
Capturing Urban Pollution to Protect Local Wetlands
Supporting the health of nearby wetlands at one of Lower North Island’s prime residential developments, a greenfield installation of an Atlan BaffleBox will treat stormwater flows across the project lifecycle. With installation occurring during early phases of development, the asset will be operational throughout the project.
With a seamless three-hour installation, the modular BaffleBox was delivered ready to install with a preinstalled baffle and cage. The asset will be primed for connection as the drainage system comes online.
The Atlan BaffleBox features high-performance pollution removal capabilities for capturing gross pollutants, sediment, foliage, litter and some hydrocarbons. This GPT asset will ensure key benefits for local water quality and protect nearby wetlands.
The BaffleBox system will remove pollutants and sediment from stormwater flows before discharge to the local wetland. Stormwater pretreatment is imperative for harm minimisation as the wetlands will act as a natural infiltration basin – with this reservoir absorbing and slowing stormwater flows.
Conserving the local water cycle, this pollution removal upstream will prevent sediment from impacting the wetlands’ capability to soak water during storm events. With a treatment flow rate of 200 litres per second for 90% of all storms, and capabilities to handle 10-year flows of 1,200 litres per second – the BaffleBox is a scalable solution that meets the site’s challenging hydraulic conditions.
The BaffleBox will benefit the local community across the development lifecycle with its economical, environmentally friendly and efficiently maintained design. With low maintenance overheads, reduced footprint, and ease of access for machinery and maintenance crews – it will have far less impact on the local environment than the development of a large sediment forebay.
An AtlanView cover and plaque will also provide community engagement and learning opportunities – showing stormwater treatment happening in real-time and allowing local community members to see the capture of pollution directly.
Clean waterways are a right, not a privilege, and we look forward to continuing to design, install and manufacture assets to enhance water quality outcomes across the Lower North Island.
