Leaking pipes, sickness and sinkholes: Our water woes will likely get worse

Sunday, 25 February 2024

Lest you think water woes are confined to tainted taps in tiny towns, or leaks sprouting across Wellington, think again - in a worst-case scenario even parts of Auckland are just a couple of days away from no running water.

Watercare chief executive Dave Chambers has the job of ensuring that doesn’t happen, as head of the council-owned company that manages Auckland water and wastewater services.

From Watercare’s Newmarket office, he outlines the 24/7 monitoring system that watches over drinking water and sewer systems in our biggest city - then he turns on a flow of contingency plans, diversified supplies, emergency preparedness and substantial resources ready to fight any problems.

“So, you’ve got it all under control then?” he’s asked, with the tiniest question mark. After all, Auckland comes out well in a comparison of national water supply and cleanliness statistics.

“Never say never,” Chambers says.

“Our two missions are freshwater 24/7 and look after the sewerage, and that’s what we’re 100% geared at.”

A lot can go wrong. He cites 465,000 connections, 522 litres of water supplied daily, and streets in which pipes are needing to be repaired 10 times a year.

The Parnell sinkhole that spewed sewerage into the harbour was not picked up by the early alert system and is described as a “disaster”.

The North Shore, meanwhile, takes all of its water from south of the Harbour Bridge, through two underground pipes and one on the bridge.

“From an infrastructure point of view, we've got a prioritisation of risk; it’s fair to say we have contingencies for most everything,” Chambers says.

“Some of our areas would have three or four days if water supply was cut, some would have less than that.

“That's the average but of course the devil is always in the detail; if a volcano went up in Auckland, it's pretty hard to have a contingency for that,” he says.

“But the challenges of Auckland for the last 12 months show we can respond to most things extremely quickly in an excellent professional way.”

Those challenges included cyclone-created Muriwai landslips taking out the west coast town’s fresh water, and that massive sinkhole - when a main sewer line collapsed to leave a 13-metre deep cavity on St Georges Bay Road in Parnell, with residents warned to not swim at inner-city beaches.

It was the third Auckland sinkhole to appear within a few months. This month, about 200 properties in Remuera, Meadowbank and St John’s went without water for 24 hours, after three pipe faults in 24 hours.

Watercare’s future-proofing program has the errant pipes scheduled for renewal within two years.

A new pipe under the harbour would lower risk and increase resilience on the North Shore, as there is no significant water north of the bridge. It sounds costly, but Chambers says cost “is the end point, not the start point”.

First, Watercare looks at what it needs to deliver, then freshwater compliance, then resilience, then level of service (avoiding water restrictions in summer), and finally growing the network.

Aucklanders have less to fear than most New Zealanders from a water infrastructure quality and underfunding crisis that has been pointed out for decades.

The Office of the Auditor-General reported in 2017 that local authorities were not investing enough, indicating water assets deteriorating to an extent that they were unable to meet the levels of service their communities expected.

An increasing number of councils have acknowledged in their long-term plan (LTP) documents there has been underinvestment in water infrastructure.

In 1998 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said our drinking water was at risk from ageing infrastructure.

And now, 26 years on, water lost to leaks is almost 25% of all use nationally: Christchurch is higher at 27% while the Wellington City, Hutt Valley, Porirua and south Wairarapa network provider is losing 40% to leaks.

“We haven't been actually replacing our assets, our pipes, as quickly as we should have, and it means today we're spending way too much time and money repairing pipes that should have been replaced,” Chambers says.

Late last year the Watercare board approved a $3.5 billion program over the next 10 years aimed at replacing ageing and poor-condition infrastructure.

“There are some streets - and it's unacceptable - where we're having to go and repair freshwater breaks, multiple times … the pipe’s buggered, we need to replace it so it’s good for another 50 years,” he says.

“We should be renewing our pipes and reducing our maintenance, I don’t want to be spending the same on maintenance and replacing, that would be daft.”

For all the pre-warnings, the proverbial has started to hit the H2O.

A Ministry of Health survey in 2020-2021 said E. coli had been detected in 41 water supplies from as far north as Paihia and as far south as Milford Sound, both of which are tourist destinations.

E. coli in water indicates recent contamination with faeces. In drinking water that demonstrates treatment has been inadequate, or the water has been contaminated post-treatment.

Auckland, Tauranga and Taranaki were the only regions where E. coli contamination was not detected, and no ‘boil water’ notice was issued during the survey. A boil notice is precautionary when the water supply may have been compromised.

Christchurch is the largest city on the list, despite spending $4.5b on water infrastructure since the earthquakes. As well as losing about 38 million litres of water a day, chlorine is likely to stay for years.

Queenstown issued one last September, after an outbreak of cryptosporidiosis, an infection of the bowels that leads to diarrhoea and vomiting. Cryptosporidium is a protozoan parasite.

In 2017, water-borne disease killed four people and caused illness in 5500 of Havelock North’s 14,000 residents when water was contaminated by sheep faeces.

In 1984, Queenstown had New Zealand’s then-largest recorded water-borne disease outbreak, affecting 3500 people, while In 1991 there were 12 cases of campylobacteriosis (suspected from water) in Havelock North.

Tasman plumber Jacob Olykan lives in Dovedale, an Upper Moutere community beset by the perfect storm of sporadic supply, and boil notices issued when there is a chance the supply may have been compromised.

Initially set up to supply water to stock, of lower quality than humans drink, Dovedale has also been caught out by population growth. Its supply can be turned off, and there are strict rules around use.

Now its water infrastructure is poorly-suited to the number of people it serves, just as the ageing Auckland water systems have to cope with a growing population.

If water supply dries up or is tainted by bacteria or parasites in your area, the options are few, says Olykan of Splashworks Plumbing Gas and Heating.

“There's limited water in this area. In the area, which we call the Golden Triangle, unfortunately, this time of year, the rain seems to go all around us,” he says.

“If it does get a little bit of rain, it goes on the top of the hill, and so the catchment area actually misses most of the rain that comes through.”

On his own property Olykan has invested in a series of tanks in case the local supplies falter, and installed water filters to take out murkiness and chlorine. Double filters without UV cost around $500, plus installation costs.

Apartment or small-section urbanities don’t have the Olykan tank option, so would have to make do with smaller back-up water tanks offering an emergency store.

“But it would only last for so long,” he says.

“Then you've got the argument of ‘Well I’m paying for water’. If we're paying the supplier it’s like paying for any other product, we expect the water to come and go as we please.

“Why should we put in the infrastructure to try to protect us from no supply, when we're paying for it all the time? Now we're paying for it twice.”

On the other hand, it’s insurance and keeps his family healthy.

“I change my water filters every three to four months. Because the turbidity is still quite quite poor coming from the system itself, but at least the E. coli and things like that are killed by the chlorine.”

Then he filters out the chlorine, happy that it’s killed the E. coli and parasites, but not wishing to drink it himself, and wary of its effect on his children.

Of course, Dovedale is not alone in its tainted water woes.

In October, national water regulator Taumata Arowai released a list of 27 councils that operate 84 drinking water supplies without a treatment barrier preventing water-borne nasties - such as cryptosporidium and giardia - from contaminating water.

Cases of water-borne gastrointestinal illnesses have been calculated to have cost $496.1 million over 40 years, principally in terms of healthcare and lost productivity.

The economic cost of the Havelock North outbreak to the country was calculated to be $21m, a government inquiry found.

The Government this month repealed under urgency the Three Waters plan of its Labour-led predecessor, appointing a Technical Advisory Group to give advice on its Local Water Done Well plan.

Three Waters had proposed 10 purpose-built independent entities, aimed at getting water infrastructure up to scratch, with economies of scale giving them more borrowing power.

Small water services providers such as Dovedale’s were generally less able to afford upgrades, and more likely to strike supply or quality problems.

National argued that would take water assets out of local hands and opposed mana whenua having a 50% presence on boards.

The Three Waters U-turn presented challenges, Thames-Coromandel mayor Len Salt has previously said, and getting enough funding for water infrastructure could now be a challenge.

Around 85% of New Zealanders receive their water services from their councils (local or unitary authorities), with the rest from smaller private and community-based schemes.

So water, water everywhere, but be careful what you drink. How did New Zealand get to the point where taps can not always be trusted?

Chambers has a theory.

“Part of the challenge with water is most of it is below ground, and you experience it when it goes wrong, so we have those twin focuses, a whole organisation devoted to fresh water and sewerage.”

Which begs the question: are people more concerned about water coming out of their taps, or toilets not flushing?

“Both,” Chambers says. “I’m concerned about both, all of the time.”