Master Plumbers meet with Wellington Water but little progress on fixing leaky tobies

Monday, 12 February 2024

Frustration is mounting amongst Master Plumbers who remain shut out of the business of fixing tobies and other low priority leaks.

The organisation’s chief executive Greg Wallace met with Wellington Water on Friday to discuss plumbers becoming involved in fixing the more than 3000 leaks across the region.

Wellington Water’s customer service general manager Kevin Locke says it had “reached out“ to Master Plumbers to see where they could work together.

“We had a positive meeting with them to explore some possible opportunities of where we could work with them and their members.”

The water authority planned to meet with Master Plumbers again next week to progress some of the opportunities discussed.

Although it was a first-step in getting plumbers onto the problem, Wallace said there was no concrete progress.

Wellington Water had apologised for initially saying certified Master Plumbers were not qualified to do the work and emphasised the issue was more around a lack of money, Wallace said.

It also became clear that Wellington Water did not know how many leaks there actually were and it was likely the volume of drinking water being lost was more than 45%.

Their system of categorising leaks according to the amount of water being lost and the threat to property assumed that tobies lost less water than other leaks but it had no data to back that view, he said.

Locke said that Wellington Water has always been upfront that without meters, it was hard to accurately state how much water is being lost.

“Providing accurate water loss figures for the Wellington metropolitan region is challenging as residential water use is not widely metered.”

Ngaire Mansfield of Straight Flush Plumbing welcomed the meeting and hopes it will lead to her firm getting some work.

With the region leaking like a sieve, she said it makes sense to use certified plumbers.

“If we find a leak on a property, all we want is to reduce the red tape and get on with (fixing) it, instead of packing up and waiting for Wellington Water.”

Locke said some councils had recently increased funding, which allowed it to increase the number of leaks it can fix.

“We are working through the most efficient way to spend that money and we currently have the resources to deal with the additional workload.”

But even with the extra money, the number of leaks would continue to rise, he warned.

“The additional funding will only make a limited impact on the growing backlog of leaks.”

Wallace had written to Local Government Minister Simeon Brown calling for a commissioner or Government appointee to oversee Wellington City’s financial priorities. He believed that was the only way to ensure the council focused on leaks.

Speaking on TV One on Sunday, Greater Wellington chair Daran Ponter supported Wallace’s call for an observer for Wellington city.

Whanau denied the suggestion her council had not treated the water crisis as a priority and that it had been waiting for water reform to fund fixing the pipes.

The council had been hoping for reform so it could take water infrastructure off their balance sheet, she said.

Wellington Water had fixed almost 5000 leaks since July 1. There are still 3377 leaks needing repair.