A warning has been issued from Waikato District Council not to swim or collect shellfish in our harbour for the next 2 days following an accidental release of wastewater on the incoming tide on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Although the wastewater plant is allowed to release treated wastewater on the incoming tide when the system is overloaded there had been no heavy rain event prior to the release and Waikato District Council says it was an accident caused by corrupt software within the computer system. The computer problem also meant the normal alarm system wasn’t triggered and staff weren’t made aware of the issue for some time.
Added to this a manual shutdown on Wednesday night also failed so the treated wastewater was released to the incoming tide again on Thursday morning. There are still outstanding questions about how these failures occurred.
Our Councillor Lisa Thomson alerted staff after finding out about the release via a combination of facebook and word of mouth but is encouraging residents to call her directly on 021 179 8256 if they ever have concerns that this might be happening again. Local marine scientist Shaw Meade from eCoast says that according to their observations the wastewater will unfortunately travel down the town side of the harbour inlet past the wharf but council is reminding people that it is treated wastewater and not raw sewerage out there at the moment.
Elsewhere, Lost Tribe Aotearoa has been featured in Rolling Stone Australia Magazine this month. In a decently long article Rolling Stone described the band as having an infectious sound mixed with touches of blues, ska, rock, and hip-hop.
They shared the video of their latest track Aio, which is the Te Reo version of the original hit Irie and also showed the news that they will be playing at Meatstock next February. Meatstock is the annual celebration of Meat and Music at Mystery Creek near Hamilton. They’ll be sharing the stage with the likes of Shihad, Katchafire and the Black Seeds over the weekend of the 24/25th of February.
Wel Networks is upgrading Raglan’s electric vehicle charger next week. The charger by the town hall will be offline for 3 days while it is upgraded from a 50kW to a 60kW charger capable of charging two vehicles at once. It will be out of action from 7:00am Monday 16th to 5:00pm Wednesday 18th October.
Xtreme Zero Waste is reminding us that today is the last day to submit to Waipa district council against plans for a Waste to Energy Plant in Te Awamutu.
The waste to energy industry is using it’s corporate muscle to try to get a foothold in New Zealand and this is the latest of several attempts to get an industry going that critics say is not actually good for the environment or for local economies where resource recovery centres like Xtreme Zero Waste employ up to 40 people. Submissions can be made via a link on Xtreme’s facebook page . https://raglanradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Rag%20Wastewater%20outlet.jpg