219 days ago

Making the Wastewater Treatment Plant less stinky

The Team from Whangarei District Council

Can you smell the wastewater treatment plant on Kioreroa Road? 🐷

We've got a plan to make it less smelly: covers and odour treatment systems (bio filters) will be installed around the four stinkiest parts of the plant between now and September 2025. What are those 4 parts? Buckle up.

💩 1: the inlet works (where the untreated sewage comes in for treating), screenings bin (where the lumps go, including old barbie dolls and false teeth)

😷 2: the sludge thickener tanks (that reduce the water in the sludge prior to disposal)

🟫 3: the sludge holding tanks (exactly what they sound like)

🐌🐌 4. the snail bin. The water treatment plant has four large trickling filters - large round bins filled with granite rock. The wastewater trickles over the rocks and the algae growing on them. The algae take massive amounts of nutrients out of the wastewater and clean it up. It’s a very robust and natural process, accelerated by engineering and technology.

The algae attract small snails (3mm), which just love the environment in the trickling filter – it is wet and full of food. The snails grow there by the billions. Every now and then, a few snails are swept out with the wastewater and are filtered out before the water goes to further cleaning.

Those “few snails” however, add up to 2-3 cubic metres per week. We put them in our snail bin and empty it weekly. However, this is long enough for it to over-power all the other smells in the wastewater treatment plant.

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More messages from your neighbours
10 days ago

⚠️ DOGS DIE IN HOT CARS. If you love them, don't leave them. ⚠️

The Team from SPCA New Zealand

It's a message we share time and time again, and this year, we're calling on you to help us spread that message further.
Did you know that calls to SPCA about dogs left inside hot cars made up a whopping 11% of all welfare calls last summer? This is a completely preventable issue, and one which is causing hundreds of dogs (often loved pets) to suffer.
Here are some quick facts to share with the dog owners in your life:

👉 The temperature inside a car can heat to over 50°C in less than 15 minutes.
👉 Parking in the shade and cracking windows does little to help on a warm day. Dogs rely on panting to keep cool, which they can't do in a hot car.
👉 This puts dogs at a high risk of heatstroke - a serious condition for dogs, with a mortality rate between 39%-50%.
👉 It is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act to leave a dog in a hot vehicle if they are showing signs of heat stress. You can be fined, and prosecuted.
SPCA has created downloadable resources to help you spread the message even further. Posters, a flyer, and a social media tile can be downloaded from our website here: www.spca.nz...
We encourage you to use these - and ask your local businesses to display the posters if they can. Flyers can be kept in your car and handed out as needed.
This is a community problem, and one we cannot solve alone. Help us to prevent more tragedies this summer by sharing this post.
On behalf of the animals - thank you ❤️

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2 days ago

Poll: Would you rather: Christmas in summer forever or winter forever?

The Team from Neighbourly.co.nz

Just a bit of a fun poll to get you thinking.

If you had to live out your Christmas days, would you prefer it was a summer Christmas or a winter Christmas?

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Would you rather: Christmas in summer forever or winter forever?
  • 60.3% Summer
    60.3% Complete
  • 37.6% Winter
    37.6% Complete
  • 2% Other - I'll share below
    2% Complete
789 votes
19 hours ago

Today’s Mind-Bender is the Last of the Year! Can You Guess It Before Everyone Else?

Riddler from The Neighbourly Riddler

You have me today, Tomorrow you'll have more;
As your time passes, I'm not easy to store;
I don't take up space, But I'm only in one place;
I am what you saw, But not what you see.
What am I?

Do you think you know the answer to our daily riddle? Don't spoil it for your neighbours! Simply 'Like' this post and we'll post the answer in the comments below at 2pm.

Want to stop seeing riddles in your newsfeed?
Head here and hover on the Following button on the top right of the page (and it will show Unfollow) and then click it. If it is giving you the option to Follow, then you've successfully unfollowed the Riddles page.

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