It was a busy and successful week for Stormwater360 as we hosted a field trip, presented three papers and proudly accepted an award at the conference dinner.

The field trip on Tuesday was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of the devices we have installed in Queenstown, and attendees could see exactly how our devices work as it was raining all day! As it was such a success we are aiming to organise site visits all around New Zealand so watch this space!

The Stormwater Conference commenced on Wednesday 22nd of May with keynote speaker James (Jim) Lenhart presenting a paper on “Operations and Maintenance of Green and Grey Infrastructure”. Jim is one of the world’s leading experts on stormwater and has worked closely with Stormwater360 over the past 20 years. It was great having him in New Zealand for this event. Jim’s presentation can be found here. 

On Thursday Mike Hannah, managing director of Stormwater360 and chairman of the Water New Zealand Stormwater Group, presented “An Applied Stormwater Education Programme”. This paper outlines the importance of environmental education and focuses on a group of primary school students from Wellington who did some great research using our LittaTrap. The paper can be found here and Mikes presentation can be found here. 

Troy Brockbank is a civil engineer and the design manager at Stormwater360. He has over 10 years professional experience in the stormwater industry and has been with Stormwater360 for almost 7 years. He presented his paper “Culturally Enhanced Stormwater Management- Integration with Te Ao Māori”. In this paper Troy recognises that cultural involvement and knowledge is often ignored in stormwater management and proposes that it can be integrated to benefit the stormwater sector. Troy’s presentation was passionate and engaging, and subsequently he has been asked to present this at other events. His paper can be found here and presentation here.   

Our research and development engineer, Dr John Cheah, presented “Diesel Exhaust Fluid- Innovative Stormwater Treatment Trials for High Ammoniacal Nitrogen Concentrations”. This technical paper summarises the work that Stormwater360 have done to find a solution for high ammoniacal nitrogen concentrations downstream of existing oil/water separators at refueling truck stops. The paper can be found here and John’s presentation can be found here.  

The Stormwater Group recognised those with excellent contributions to the sector with awards at the conference dinner on Thursday evening.

Stormwater360 was very proud to be awarded the inaugural Innovation Award from the Water New Zealand Stormwater Group. This was awarded for the work on our LittaTrap, which is a catchpit insert that effectively captures gross pollutants before they can reach the ocean.

Mike Hannah was also honoured to receive a Pounamu from his peers at the conference as a gift before him and Greg Yeoman venture to Canada in July for the launch of the LittaTrap there.

The Stormwater360 team headed back to Auckland on Friday afternoon and are looking forward to attending the annual conference again next year!