Water agency seeks $2.5b cash boost

Tuesday, 30 January 2024

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau speaks outside Parliament after meeting with Local Government Minister Simeon Brown about the city's water crisis.

A soon-to-be released secret report into Wellington Water – which is asking Wellington City Council for more than $2.5 billion – reveals soaring costs and duplicated jobs.

The agency on Monday confirmed it is seeking from the city $714 million in operational funding and $1.8b in capital funding in its 10-year plan, being decided in 2024.

But, even if the funding was approved, Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell said the city was “at least five years away from a noticeable difference” in pipe problems and a full fix could be decades away.

That $2.5b request worked out at $250m a year, but the spending would likely increase in the later years of the decade. That equalled roughly a doubling of the current funding from the city council, Haskell said.

Repairs to a significant water pipe burst on Customhouse Quay in September last year.

“There are only so many road cones people will put up with,” she said.

It comes as the Wellington region faces the risk of water outages this summer, as years of under-investment in pipes, excessive leaks and a dry, hot summer have created a perfect storm that, under a worst-case scenario, could see a regional state of emergency declared. Water restrictions are already in place and there is a strong chance of them becoming stricter yet.

Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell says the funding request represents an effective doubling in cost to the Wellington City Council.

Wellington mayor Tory Whanau last week promised more council money for fixing leaks and on Monday came out of a meeting with Local Government Minister Simeon Brown having promised him a copy of the still-secret report into Wellington Water.

Wellington mayor Tory Whanau speaks outside Parliament after meeting with Local Government Minister Simeon Brown about the city's water crisis.

Details were leaked to The Post in December, showing a lack of clearly defined reporting and performance measures with contractors, that the Wellington City Council carried the majority of risk, and that costs to the council had soared much higher than contractor costs.

It found a convoluted process meant customer calls were duplicated, leading to a back-and forth between Wellington Water and the council. Jobs were regularly duplicated in the process, leading to significant delays in crews being sent to fix problems.

But the actual draft report was so-secret that Wellington City councillors were only allowed to see part of it on a screen during a closed workshop.

Council spokesperson Richard MacLean on Monday confirmed councillors would get the report this week and it was expected to be publicly released soon after.

A spokesperson from Whanau’s office confirmed Brown had asked for the report and would be supplied to him by February 1, which is the deadline to supply other information about how the city was dealing with the pipe issues.

Whanau, who took council chief executive Barbara McKerrow to the “professional but positive” meeting with Brown, said it was “highly possible” Wellingtonians would face years of summer water shortages.

The meeting followed a high-profile dressing down of Whanau and and Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy by Brown, after they allegedly failed to supply information about their council’s response to the crisis.

In an emailed statement, Brown said he heard about the report because of media enquiries, but he had not received a copy and did not know what it said.