Greywater

This article is not yet complete...

--Auckland City Council--

Policy on greywater recycling is to passively permit, but not actively promote it, though it changes with every report. This report[1] in 2006 by the Manager of Water Planning to the Works and Services Committee states that Auckland City promotes greywater recycling and notes the primary role of the Building Act to regulate it and that Auckland Regional Council's Technical Publication 58 makes provision for it. The Waiheke Community Board asked council what it does to actively promote as opposed to passively permit greywater recycling, which led to a report stating that because the Ministry of Health does not support the use of greywater recycling in New Zealand and that heavy maintenance is required, such as manual dosing with chlorine on a daily basis. The former statement is true (see below) but the latter statement is false for any commercially available system in New Zealand. Michael McQuillian (Auckland City Utility and Environmental Manager) visited an ECOplus greywater installation on Waiheke Island and subsequently agreed to reduce the consent fee for building consent for a greywater system to $250. This is now written on the counter at the Waiheke Island council offices.

--Auckland Regional Council--

Policy is to support greywater recycling. However in practise the $2,000 deposit (total cost could be less, or more) required for a resource consent application to irrigate with greywater (plus a similar fee for the consultant to produce the accompanying report) more than doubles the cost of installation, even before ongoing monitoring fees etc. are accounted for. Fortunately the ARC have withdrawn their demand that greywater recycling to the toilet also require a resource consent - this is now considered to be solely a building consent issue. In reality, 36.7% of Waiheke Islanders recycle their greywater in one way or another, according to research conducted by ARC [2] - very few of these would have obtained resource consent.

--Ministry of Health--

Policy to follow...

--Ways to Recycle Greywater--

More information to follow...