Wellington sewage spill: Mayor Andrew Little wants to know ‘who knew what, when’

An independent inquiry into Wellington’s sewage plant fiasco will need to establish “who knew what, when” and whether anyone had raised red flags about the now-failed plant.

Wellington Mayor Andrew Little said an inquiry sponsored by central Government would help get to the bottom of what caused the Moa Point Wastewater Treatment Plant to suffer a mechanical failure and become flooded with raw sewage.

Locals have been warned they won’t be able to swim on south coast beaches for months as the issue is fixed, as hazardous waste is pumped into the ocean.

Last week raw, untreated sewage was pumped directly into a beach near Moa Pt, but workers have since been able to switch to a longer outfall pipe, pumping waste about 1.8km out to sea. The waste is now partially treated.

Little told Ryan Bridge TODAY many “relationships” were involved in the problem, and an inquiry would help when there were “too many players in this potentially all talking over each other”.

Wellington City Council owned the site, Wellington Water was contracted to run the region’s water network, waste management company Veolia was contracted to run Moa Pt, and Greater Wellington Regional Council had regulatory oversight, Little said.

“It just needs somebody who’s independent of all those bodies to step in [and] see who knew what when,” Little said.

He wanted the inquiry to “see whether any red flags were raised” as well as work out what had happened, whether there were design faults, and investigate the quality of Veolia’s work.

Little said the council was committed to keeping rates increases as low as possible over the next year, but the initial cost of fixing the plant would fall on council. This meant it would “have to make trade-offs” and not fund “nice to do” things.

“Right now the critical thing is to get the plant recovered, sort it out, get it repaired, find out what the faults were, then deal with those issues afterwards.”

Little yesterday said he had a “very positive and constructive meeting” with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to discuss the problem.

He said they discussed what might be the quickest way to get an independent investigation.

“The remediation work is going to start in a matter of weeks, and we need to know what we’re going to do to fix the plant and get it operating again.”

What progress is being made?

Little earlier said the plant is in a “complete failed state” at the moment, but progress is being made on cleaning.

He said there are efforts to put in odour-minimising measures to help ease concerns for nearby residents.

“There are a number of things running at once, but the sooner we can get an inquiry up and the sooner it can conclude its work and tell us what the causes are, then it’s going to be easier to get a repair to the plant. That means we minimise the risk of this again,” he said.

He said Wellington Water and Wellington City Council workers are monitoring people on the south coast, making sure they have public health information.

Little said the monitoring results were “encouraging”.

“They’re showing, apart from around the short outfall and around the Moa Point area, reasonably low levels of contamination.”

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