Dramatic new pictures from Christchurch's damaged wastewater plant have revealed the huge task ahead, as residents are forced to continue living with the stench.
Looking at Manon Kozanic-Harris’s house you’d find it hard to believe it was freshly painted.
“It’s only two months old… and it's already been discoloured.”
“Unfortunately our insurance aren’t interested in looking at it.”
The Bromley local’s home has been sprayed with a grubby film she claims drifted over from the wastewater plant just a few minutes' drive away.
READ MORE: Christchurch’s sewage stink expected to linger for summer
“It's just absolutely disgusting it smells like a dog has pooed inside or even vomited sometimes and it seeps in somehow I don’t know how and sometimes we even wake to it in the middle of the night cause it's just so strong.”
And she’s not alone.
It’s seven months since a fire that started on a roof destroyed the buildings that contained the sewage plant’s filtering system. Residents likened the “rotten” stench in the weeks following the blaze as “like a toilet everywhere”.
To date, repair crews have removed just a fraction of what remains of the scorched buildings, which are then chipped and trucked to the nearby landfill.
But the worst of the stench is coming from the city’s now-unfiltered oxidation ponds.
Christchurch city councillor Helen Beaumont says it’s all a work in progress, pumps to aerate the ponds arrived from Europe and Asia on Friday and will be operating within weeks.
“The wildlife will return to those ponds once the water quality in those ponds improves.”
She says the clean-up is still on track to be finished by September, giving residents a breath of somewhat fresher air.
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