Significant flooding of the Wetlands and Bullock Creek: Evening of the 6th July 21

We’ve had a fair amount of rain recently, but it was not a 1:100 year event by a long chalk.

Yet again, the storm water pond serving the Alpha Series subdivision directly above and adjacent to the spring-fed headwaters of Bullock Creek was filled to capacity and overflowed onto Fish and Game land, through the wetland and into Bullock Creek.

We have uploaded some photos of the flooding and subsequent damage to the Wetlands, to our Website Gallery.

You can see in the photos which were taken on Wednesday morning that there is a fair amount of turbidity, sediment or silt in the creek that is both discolouring the water and settling onto the gravels which is not good for the trout spawning areas - and not good for the overall ecology. Note that water in the pond looks brown and muddy and there’s evidence of industrial rubbish.   We don’t know what contaminants might be in the storm water but given the subdivision is full of occupied houses and builders are constructing new homes near the pond, it’s fair to assume the storm water did contain pollutants. The two Triton arches (underground storm water retention tanks/sumps installed by the developer at the bottom of the Alpha Series subdivision) were both completely full. Hence the pump that QLDC put in to transfer excess storm water out of the pond and into the tanks was not operating.

 ORC Environmental officers were on site on Wednesday observing and recording conditions and FOBC has filed a complaint through ORC’s Pollution Hotline, submitting both photos and video evidence.

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