A map of Wellington’s southern coast shows bays labeled Owhiro Bay, Island Bay, Houghton Bay, Lyall Bay, and Breaker Bay, marked by red stars, with a pink star near Breaker Bay and “THE BULLETIN” text on the right.
A Wellington Water graphic showing the the epicentre of the sewage overflow at Moa Point, marked by the pink star. The red stars are water testing locations, while the overlay shows the extent of the rāhui. (Image: Wellington Water)

The Bulletinabout 11 hours ago

How Wellington’s sewage crisis exposed years of dysfunction

Contributing writer
A map of Wellington’s southern coast shows bays labeled Owhiro Bay, Island Bay, Houghton Bay, Lyall Bay, and Breaker Bay, marked by red stars, with a pink star near Breaker Bay and “THE BULLETIN” text on the right.
A Wellington Water graphic showing the the epicentre of the sewage overflow at Moa Point, marked by the pink star. The red stars are water testing locations, while the overlay shows the extent of the rāhui. (Image: Wellington Water)
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The Moa Point wastewater plant failure has reignited criticism over under-investment – and raised serious questions about the company that runs it, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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Mayor to raise ‘catastrophic’ failure with PM

Wellington mayor Andrew Little will meet with PM Christopher Luxon today, with the calamitous failure at the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant set to dominate discussions. The meeting had already been scheduled, but Little confirmed the sewage disaster would be raised, with questions looming over whether an independent investigation or inquiry should follow. Over the weekend, as RNZ reports, Wellington Water crews continued racing to remove tens of millions of litres of sewage from the flooded plant before it turns septic and anaerobic – a process that would intensify odours and pose serious health and safety risks to workers.

The long outfall pipe was made operational late on Thursday night, allowing screened wastewater to be discharged 1.8km into Cook Strait for greater dilution. Wellington Water says this has reduced harm to south coast beaches, but the risk to public health remains.

Beaches shut and festival plans curtailed

Public advice remains unchanged in light of the ongoing discharge: people are urged to stay off Wellington’s south coast beaches, avoid contact with seawater or spray, not to collect or eat shellfish, and to keep dogs away from the shoreline, with a rāhui in place from Ōwhiro Bay to Breaker Bay. That advice forced the cancellation of water-based activities at Sunday’s Island Bay Festival, including the Blessing of the Boats, reports RNZ’s Krystal Gibbens.

Water quality testing on Friday showed no indication that untreated wastewater from the outfall pipe has reached the inner harbour – meaning Eastbourne, Kilbirnie, Petone and the CBD remain safe – and some elevated readings were lower than earlier in the week. Wellington Water chair Nick Leggett said officials hoped that by the end of this week there would be enough data to reassess the current estimates that beaches could be closed for months.

Years of warnings at Moa Point

The Moa Point failure comes after years of documented non-compliance and operational problems at the plant, which is operated by the French-founded multinational Veolia. As the Herald’s Ethan Manera writes, reports dating back to 2021 flagged repeated breaches, equipment failures and underperformance, with monthly reporting showing the facility has never been fully compliant for a single month since August 2023.

Those issues sit within wider problems with Wellington Water’s contract with Veolia, which was described in an independent review as “dysfunctional”, The Post’s Andrea Vance and Tom Hunt report. The relationship between the two parties was marked by mistrust, with Veolia staff characterising it as a “master-slave relationship”, while Wellington Water was criticised for micromanagement and ineffective contract oversight. The same reviews found key equipment was “obsolete and outdated”, prone to failure and difficult to maintain. While these problems were well known, it has yet to be established what role, if any, they played in last week’s catastrophic failure.

Plumbing failures and political choices

The crisis has prompted another round of hand-wringing about the state of our infrastructure, and the politics that helped bring us here. In the Sunday Star-Times (paywalled), editor Tracey Watkins described Moa Point as “a textbook study in the ‘New Zealand Way’ of infrastructure”, arguing that the public needs to shoulder much of the blame. “We, the voters, are the real culprits. We are repeat ‘hip-pocket’ offenders who keep getting sucked in by politicians who milk our prejudices while avoiding the hard choices.”

Meanwhile, in the Weekend Post, Luke Malpass situated the failure within a broader political pattern, arguing that Labour’s mishandling of Three Waters squandered a workable solution, while National’s rate-capping policy will only exacerbate the under-investment problem. Together, he said, these choices have left councils and central government poorly equipped to deal with ageing assets whose costs are rising faster than inflation. “In the end, this is about political choices. Leadership matters. So does making the case and accepting that projects are expensive, unpopular during construction, and guaranteed to attract critics – at least until they are finished.”