Wellington pipes leaking like a sieve

Thursday, 12 October 2023

Across the region, the equivalent of 30.6 Olympic pools is being lost every day.

Wellington is leaking like a sieve, with the equivalent of 30 Olympic pools of water each day lost through decrepit pipes.

A recent water summit for councils across the region was told the region faces a water crisis that could see taps run dry.

Upper Hutt is the leakiest city, with Wellington Water announcing it was losing 52% of its drinking water.

It was a figure that left Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy flabbergasted and claiming the figure, and Wellington Water, had no credibility.

As well as disputing the figure, he rejected the claim by Wellington Water that his council needed to speed up plans to renew pipes and that leaks are costing his ratepayers $14,900 a day.

Wellington Water boss Tonia Haskell is advocating for water meters as the region grapples with an acute water shortage, in part caused by leaky pipes.

Wellington Water has moved to a new system of measuring leaks and chief executive Tonia Haskell is confident those figures are accurate.

The estimated water loss from the public and private pipes for the overall region (excluding South Wairarapa) is 44%. That is a daily loss of 76.56 million litres, which equates for 30.6 Olympic swimming pools (2.5 million litres per pool).

Wellington Water has upgraded the way it measures water loss across the region. It is bad news for Upper Hutt.

Anyway you look at it, that is a lot of water.

As the Wellington region’s water services provider, Haskell said was important to ensure councils, which own and fund the water infrastructure, had the most accurate information about the amount of water being lost through their pipe networks.

The backlog in leaks is increasing steadily across the region as Wellington Water struggles to fix the leaky pipes.

Wellington Water had previously relied on a “very small number” of manually read meters to produce figures for each council. In 2021/22, 16 new monitors were installed.

Councils, including Upper Hutt, were given the data in August.

In Upper Hutt’s case, Haskell estimated the city was losing the equivalent of about 4.3 Olympic sized swimming pools a day.

The figures, however, come with a cautionary warning.

Across the region, there are more than 2700 leaks needing repair. Wellington City has the most, but Upper Hutt is losing the biggest percentage of its water.

The figures were still estimates, Haskell said, and more accurate assessments were not possible without implementing universal water metering across the region.

The regional loss of 44% is due to “historical under investment” and Haskell said the “best” solution was continuing to fix leaks, installing smart meters and increasing storage.

“The region’s pipes are ageing at a faster rate than they can be fixed.”

In Upper Hutt, that means replacing 40% of pipes over the next 30 years.

Although the data is now more accurate Haskell said this does not mean tere has not also been an increase in water loss.

The data showed there had been a genuine increase in water loss across all councils compared to last year, with the level of increase varying from council to council.

The methodology used by Wellington Water has been independently reviewed and audited and Haskell said the new approach “effectively doubled” the confidence it had in the figures released to council.

Wellington Water fixed 700 leaks in September, 45 of which were considered urgent. It currently has 2732 leaks needing repair.