'Grumpy” is 198cms of environmental indignation today.

'If it was a tip, ” he says, just a little condescendingly, 'we would have refuse transfer station on the sign at the gate. Wouldn't we?”

Seems fair.

'But it's not. It's a poo farm. A waste water treatment plant and we treat human waste.”

So what's the point Grumpy? Grumpy being senior plant operator Lance Barlow of Tauranga City Council's Waste Water Treatment Plant – the poo farm. Lance is a career poo man, having been in the industry for 30 years.

And the point he is trying to make is a valuable one for all ratepaying pooers. When we do our business, close the lid and flush, and we flush six million times a day in Tauranga, and Lance is very happy to take care of things from there.

Your business becomes his business at the treatment plant in Chapel Street.

Six million flushes a day. This city of 120,000 must spend an inordinate amount of time in the dunny each day.

'I dunno why they stick things in the toilet,” says Lance. He means things other than those that should be in a toilet. 'Probably because they can make it go away. They can flush and something disappears and becomes someone else's problem.”

What sort of things? Lots and lots of material and rags, wooden toys, dog bones. Things that have no place in a toilet.

'We get $50 and $20 notes. We also get calls to retrieve false teeth. Or my wife has lost her ring down the toilet and can you get it back for us please?”

Lance just shrugs. I suspect those teeth won't grace a face again. And shouldn't. And a diamond ring in 30 million litres of waste water has a needle in the haystack feel about it.

But much of the extraneous, supplementary matter which reaches the station couldn't negotiate the S bend so it must enter the system through manhole services. Yep – people just chuck their rubbish down the sewer. Out of sight, out of mind and with no regard to the consequences.

'We have a bin out there full of rubbish that's come through the system. It's taken away every four or five days. Five tons a week we truck out.”

Its rubbish which clogs filters, jams pumps, causes breakdowns, costs manpower, costs call-outs and machine times. It's a cost to you and I, the ratepayers.

'The water treatment plant is your asset. That's what you pay rates for,” reminds Lance. 'It's very frustrating. We are trying to do a good job by looking after your asset. Help us help you.”

Moments earlier I had inadvertently treated the senior plant operator like a leper when he stuck out his hand to greet me at the poo farm. I was wondering if that hand was safe to touch, where had it been?

'I am clean,” he re-assures me.

They are all very wary about cleanliness. 'We're not going to work on a dirty old pump and wipe our noses. We are always washing our hands. And if our overalls get splashed with s***, we put on clean ones. And if you really get covered you shower so you are always clean.”

He's not offended. It's a common reaction when he tells people he is in poo.

'They say that's interesting and walk away. They don't really want to know me, they think I am contagious. They expect me to stink.””

So lips curl, noses turn up and interest turns off.

What's with the 'Grumpy” bit? Well, he's grumpy at work and grumpy at home because he is a self-confessed intolerant perfectionist. Yes, you can work with faeces and still be fastidious.

'I like efficiency, tidiness and cleanliness. I don't like it, I demand it.”

Grumpy is probably an image he likes to perpetuate because he's a streak of conversation, humour and good nature. You would have a beer with him as long as he wore regulation rubber gloves and didn't get too close.

It was inevitable he would develop an affinity for poo. He went from a long drop at the family home to being regularly pooed on at his grandmothers dairy farm and finally to a waste treatment plant.

Human waste became a family thing. His wife was a lab assistant at the plant for nine years.

'She has a sharp nose. When I get home she can tell by the smell where I have been working that day and what I have been doing.” And no, he can't share the yukky aspects of his job with his daughters.

'They don't want to know. Yukky, bloody or gory, they don't want to know. Before you start, stop!” But he will share something yukky with us.

'I was pulling a pump in a dry well apart because it was blocking all the time and we didn't know what the hell was going on.”

He was ferreting around in all the muck when he touched something that felt like a human skull. It was someone's hard hat. Then he discovered a huge rag snagging a pump. 'I was gagging. My glove snagged and broke as I hauled it out and I had a handful of someone's turd.”

Of course there are days when he wonders what he's doing there. 'But the next day I cycle 10km from seaside Maungatapu to a sewage plant and its enjoyable.

I live in Maxwells Road. When I flush, the business has probably been delivered to Lance before the cistern has refilled. And as a local, when you walk, cycle or drive by the plant you can sometimes, just sometimes, experience an unholy stench.

'Not us,” says Lance unshakeably. 'Definitely not us.” He blames putrefying sea lettuce but then qualifies.

The ponds are now covered, the smell is contained, and foul odours are sucked off the oxidation ponds and through a bio-filter where living bacteria do their work.

'The only smell will be a soily barky smell which could be more noticeable when there's a low cloud ceiling or there's no prevailing wind.”

They check daily for smell emissions and have people stationed around town to report smells. They are very sensitive about smell at this poo farm. And if there is a smell it is fixed – tout de suite. No, they don't discuss poo in the smoko room at lunchtime and no, he hasn't had a sick day in 30 years that can be attributed to his work environment.

Our poo is in good hands. Lance is proud and pleased to do the job.

'It is a crucial bit of a city's infrastructure and it needs tending to. I am proud to do the job and do it properly.”

Did you know that three times a week the slurry – 'It's inert, been cooked basically” reassures Lance – is trucked across the Kaimais to a dump site somewhere near Hamilton?

It's safe as long as you don't put it around crops for human consumption.