Wellington Water needs fixing, not just its leaks

Tuesday, 6 February 2024

A Wellington Water team fixing a leak in Maungaraki, Lower Hutt.

Dave Armstrong is a playwright and satirist based in Wellington. He is a regular opinion contributor.

OPINION: As the prospect of even more water restrictions looms, and city traffic is delayed by pipe replacements, Wellingtonians are becoming increasingly angry.

Wellington’s mayor and her council are copping a lot of the flak. Yet despite the mayor having seemingly drunk the water of her neo-liberal council leadership and come out in support of water meters and asset sales, we can’t blame her and her council for the current aqualamity. Most people agree that these problems are systemic, going back many years.

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

The council was severely criticised for asking some difficult questions of Wellington Water and refusing to fund their financial requests without question. But Wellington Water doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation.

Remember the fluoride debacle where they kept the failure of a fluoridation plant secret? Remember the large amount of money spent on private PR consultants when water was geysering around Wellington and sewage was seeping into the harbour? Remember the ad for a marketer who would earn $177k of our rates. Remember the TikTok video of the employee doing nothing?

I’ve started to wonder if Wellington Water has been putting something in the water to make us forget about its less-than-adequate history.

Recently we heard that principal contractor Fulton Hogan is fixing fewer leaks than they were three years ago yet are being paid more. And well before that, fewer leaks were being fixed by this contractor than when Citycare Water, owned by Christchurch City Council, had the contract.

It feels to me like Wellington City Council is pouring vast amounts of money into a pipe called Wellington Water. Large amounts of it is leaking to highly paid marketing jobs, contractor profits, PR consultants, and executive salaries, and only a small trickle is paying for fixing leaks. Good on the council for demanding a bit of accountability for an organisation that appears to combine Trump Tower extravagance with Soviet-style efficiency.

It seems that whoever at Wellington Water is responsible for making the contractors accountable needs to be held accountable. My worry is that they will hire another highly paid consultant to do it. Perhaps we need to install productivity meters at Wellington Water.

The latest PR move from possibly Wellington’s worst council-controlled organisation is Fix-it Friday. This initiative sees Wellington Water cheerfully tell us via Facebook how many leaks their increasingly expensive and decreasingly efficient contractors have fixed in the last week. It’s all very cute, and although I have no problem with Fix-it Friday, it’s the other days of the week I worry about: Marketing Monday, Too-slow Tuesday, Wasteful Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday, Shortage Saturday and Super-leak Sunday.

When Wellington had dry summers in the past, Wellingtonians managed to voluntarily reduce their usage by about 20%, but there doesn’t seem the will this time, as public confidence in our council-controlled organisation seems to have eroded as much as a hundred-year-old pipe in Lambton Quay.

While leaks are only being fixed slowly, the public discussion has shifted to water meters. Surely water meters can identity leaks? I walked from the zoo to Constable Street recently and immediately identified three leaks. People all over Wellington are identifying leaks. The problem is fixing them. Once we fix all the identifiable leaks, sure, let’s have a conversation about the leaks we can’t see.

Although spending hundreds of millions of dollars on meters might identify small leaks on private property, there are cheaper ways. If you turn off all your taps in your house and listen to the toby for your house and hear water still running, then you have a leak. Some plumbers – well-trained little guys with few corporate overheads – have put their hand up to help. I hope some sensible people associated with Wellington Water, like Campbell Barry and Nick Leggett, take note.

In the debate about water meters, we are told they work because they make people understand that if they waste water they will pay more. If that’s true, where are the incentives at Wellington Water? Councils pay for millions of litres used every day before it gets to ratepayers. If the leaks were all fixed Wellington Water would actually receive less money in charges.

At least our erratic bus companies get penalised if they fail to carry out a trip. I’m sure Wellington Water are committed to fixing leaks, thanks to the torrent of recent bad PR, yet the charging system leaves little incentive.

There has been talk of the Transport Minister installing commissioners for councils who don’t seriously address the aqualamity. Perhaps the best place to install a commissioner or observer is at Wellington Water.

There is no doubt that the biggest single water issue in Wellington at present is fixing the leaks. But second on my list would be fixing Wellington Water. It needs to be moved back to an organisation focussed solely on service. It needs public values not corporate values. If that fails, perhaps it’s time to talk about bringing water back inhouse like it used to be. It could hardly be worse.