Wyong South Sewage Treatment Plant

Sewage from houses, businesses, educational institutions, commercial complexes, industries needs to be processed to achieve a suitable quality prior to disposal or reuse of water to prevent public health and environmental harm. Sewage treatment plants (STPs) consist of a series of complex processes to remove floating objects and solids, organic matter, bacteria, virus and other substances. STPs are designed to cater for varying flows and contents in the sewage, over the day and throughout the year, to ensure that the treated discharge meets health and environmental requirements. 

Mechanical and biological processes are used at sewage treatment plants to separate the solids (sludge) from the water (effluent). Part of the sludge is reused as a soil conditioner in Council’s landscape works while the remainder is disposed of to sanitary landfill. The effluent which has been treated to secondary standard typically contains less than 0.002% solids and is discharged to the ocean via outfalls at Wonga Point, Norah Head and Winney Bay. 
 

The Wet Weather Pond is a constructed pond for the storage of treated effluent, the pond is utilised when the treatment plant receives high flows and does not have the pumping capacity to discharge the effluent through to the outfall. The effluent will be stored in the pond until the inflow into the treatment plant has reduced.

The EPA is the environmental regulator within the NSW government responsible for working with business, government, and the community to reduce pollution and waste, protect human health, and prevent degradation of the environment. The EPA issues environment protection licences, requires strict operating conditions and pollution reduction programs, monitors compliance with licence conditions and investigating pollution events, orders the clean-up of pollution and prosecutes or imposes fines to ensure environmental and human health protection. The EPA develops environmental programs and policies, delivers education and awareness programs, and provides technical support and expertise to other government agencies.

An Environmental Protection Licence (EPL) is issued by the EPA for anyone undertaking activities defined in legislation that have the potential to cause pollution. to control the impacts of pollution in NSW. The EPL defines the scale and nature of activities that are permitted, the controls that must be in place to reduce the risk of pollution, and the reporting requirements to the EPA. The holder of each EPL must comply with all conditions of the EPL, develop and update pollution response and management plans, and report monitoring data.

Council holds several EPLs for community services it provides that have the potential to cause pollution. Treatment and disposal of sewage is an activity that requires an EPL. 

Holder of an EPL requires an application to vary a premises-based activity licence. A variation includes the substitution, omission or amendment of an existing condition, or attaching a new condition to a licence. These changes include, undertaking a new scheduled activity or ceasing a scheduled activity, removing an activity covered by a licence or adding a new activity to be covered by the licence, changing the scale of an activity, and any other variations.

Council must apply to update an EPL if it changes the scale or nature of its activities that can potentially cause pollution. This includes changes to locations where discharges to the environment will occur.
 

An additional discharge point will allow controlled discharge of treated water, to avoid a large uncontrolled volume following major storm events, and to be monitored and controlled in a manner that minimises harm to the environment.

Discharge can be directed to the creek in a manner that does not impact neighbouring properties, whilst water quality can be monitored in the creek to demonstrate that entry and mixing of the discharged water does not cause environmental harm or risk to public health.
 

The community is invited to: 

• Read the information available on this page 
• Register to attend a virtual drop-in information session to discuss the project with Council staff