Internal emails reveal strife over critical Wellington Water report

Friday, 2 February 2024

Weeks before a scathing report into Wellington Water was released, the water agency rejected it and argued it was funded from a budget intended to fix leaks – a claim rubbished by the city council.

“[Wellington Water] does not accept the report, and is unable to approve it or sign off on the report’s recommendations,” water utility chief executive Tonia Haskell wrote to council chief executive Barbara McKerrow on December 20.

It was included in emails released by Wellington Water under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act on Thursday, the same day a Wellington City Council-commissioned and previously-secret report into Wellington Water was released.

That report built on previously-leaked details and showed a publicly-funded agency beset by soaring costs, duplication of jobs, and delays.

It comes as a water crisis grips Wellington, where residents are being warned that historic under-investment in pipes and excessive water lost through leaks means some taps may run dry and even stricter water restrictions are likely this summer.

The report argued there was a lack of accountability from Wellington Water to the city council, which appeared to have given it an “open cheque book”, and an overall decrease in reactive works to problems. It found an inconsistent approach across the region, “a number of disparate systems”, and a lack of appropriate performance monitoring.

It also found the cost of the contract between Wellington Water and Fulton Hogan had increased hugely in two years.

But the newly-released emails show the inner tensions as the report release was finalised.

“I feel disappointed that we have used funding allocated from the leakage funding to seek an opinion on the [Wellington Water] model,” a September 19 email from the water agency to the council said. The name of the sender and recipient was redacted.

It argued that the review, which had some useful insights and recommendations, “lacked independence, balance, and recognition of the hard work the front line teams are delivering in a challenging environment”.

It alleged a “fundamental lack of understanding” of the relationship between Wellington Water and contractor Fulton Hogan, a “lack of understanding” of how the council plans to fund works, and other issues including different fees and costs being conflated.

In an email shortly after, Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell emailed others in the agency and Infrastructure NZ that the report was “riddled with errors and shows a complete misread of the Wellington Water and Wellington City context”.

Council spokesman Richard MacLean said the $74,060 cost of the report did not come from money earmarked for leaks.

“It is critical that we understand the rising cost of fixing leaks and any improvements that can be made to reduce cost to enable [Wellington Water] to fix more leaks more quickly,” he said.

City councillor Ben McNulty on Thursday said the report’s key findings about escalating costs and poor delivery were not disputed.

“Wellingtonians expect council to dramatically increase our investment in water but we need to know that investment will deliver results,” he said.

“That we're fixing less leaks per month now than we were three years ago despite spending substantially more shows the urgent need to review the Wellington Water contractual model.”

The FieldForce4 report says it interviewed more than 21 council, Wellington Water, and Fulton Hogan staff but front-line staff were excluded. It analysed more than 90 documents.

FieldForce4 chief executive Murray Niederer on Thursday said he could not comment other than to say most of the data his company used came from Wellington Water.