Sewage discharge into harbours a problem

Press, 31 March 1981, Page 25

Sewage discharge into harbours a problem

PA Whangarei The Harbours? Association wants action taken to stop the discharge of human sewage into harbours. The association at its conference at Whangarei passed a remit setting up a committee to examine possible regulations to control the discharge of sewage into harbours. It will refer the remit to the association’s organisation of executives to see if they can find a way to implement the remit. The Nelson Harbour Board’s deputy chairman, Mr R. A. Fletcher, said increased numbers of fishing boats in Nelson Harbour had caused a sewage-dis-posal problem. “A number of these fishing vessels do not have provision for effluent holding tanks and do not hesitate to discharge their waste direct into the calm waters of the inner harbour,” he said. - With the substantial increase in both the number and size of the fishing boats the problem of the additional sewage created bv the boats could not be al’lowed to go r.ncontrolled, Mr Fletcher said. He said that if vessels

were given reasonable notice to have holding tanks installed there should not be any objection to what the board considered was a reasonable requirement. He said the board could introduce a by-law to cover Nelson Harbour but it felt the pollution of harbours was a national problem.

The regulations were likely to receive more respect and be more effective if approached nationally, he said. New Zealand was already party to an international convention passed in 1973 requiring ships to have holding tanks by 1983. However, he said, it appeared that many ships were still being built without them. Mr J. McCallum, a member of the Auckland Harbour Board, said that if the boards passed regulations or holding tanks they coma force fishing boats out of t’.ieir ports.

The general manager of the Wellington Harbour Board, Mr J. F. Stewart, said that Wellington had become the main port for foreign fishing boats, and pollution was a problem. However, ' the problem needed international con-

trols to ensure enforcement, he said. “There is no point in stalling on something that is a world-wide problem,” the deputy chairman of the Bay of Plentv Harbour Board, Mr R. A. Owens, told the conference. He said there was no reason why the ships could not be fitted with holding tanks after a certain period. ■°ut a Royal New Zealand spokesman told the conference that if regulations were passed ontrolling sewage disposal in New Zealand’s harbours the Navy would have to ask for an exemption. Commander I. A. Hunter said that although new Navy ships, such as the Monowai ard the new diving tender, had been ■ built with holding tanks it would not be possible to put these into existing warships. He said the addition of holding tanks was not “technically possible or feasible” without severely reducing the performance of the ship. However, the refit programme for H.M.N.Z.S. Taranaki included the addition of holding tanks.