Stormwater Renewals – Gobray Crescent, Mount Maunganui

Creating resilience within communities

Small jobs making big impacts.

Sometimes the smallest things can get forgotten about, and that’s often the case with stormwater. Its big siblings’ potable water and wastewater get a lot of attention and that’s understandable. If your tap didn’t turn on or your toilet didn’t flush, you would be telling everyone you could so it could get fixed right away! -But a puddle on your driveway, or flooding on your lawn – it’s annoying, but not the end of the world, you know it will eventually go away. With climate change making rain events become more extreme and frequent we are noticing more and more of this nuisance flooding occurring.

We have been working alongside Tauranga City Council on their stormwater renewals programme. This programme of works looks to identify stormwater assets that are not performing as intended. This could be due to the pipe being undersized, or old and in poor condition leading to pipe failure and blockages.

An assessment of the available data is undertaken, future investigation sometimes recommended, and the best solution put forward for implementation.

The first renewal off the line has recently been completed in Gobray Crescent – this was approximately 170m of new 375mm and 450mm diameter concrete pipe, replacing the existing undersized and in poor condition pipe. The new pipe is designed with climate change rainfall events in mind – and as concrete has a 100year life span we want to maximise the usefulness of the new pipe from both a functionality perspective and a sustainability perspective.

The next project is Grove Ave with construction of 122m of new 375mm and 300mm diameter concrete pipe and increased capacity catchpit inlets going to kick of November 2023.

Designs for several others are also currently away with a few of them hopefully fulfilling the option to daylight some pipes into green space allow a natural system to better manage the stormwater while mimicking the original natural environment.