Wellington Water attacks backlog of leaks
Tuesday, 28 May 2024
After a tough two or three years trying to get on top of the leaks that have seen the region losing up to 44% of its water, Wellington Water has some good news.
The number of leaks has nearly halved since February as a result of extra funding from Wellington and Hutt City councils.
Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell confirmed that leaks had fallen to 1793, down from a February high of 3850.
While it was not clear how much water that was saving, she said it was safe to assume that it was significant.
In December Wellington City councillors voted to increase the budget to fix leaks by $2 million.
The extra funding allowed Wellington Water to attack the backlog of minor leaks.
With the region losing so much water, it had no choice but to prioritise the worst leaks that endangered property or those losing the most water, she said.
“This (the extra money) allowed us to get into the priority three and four leaks, the tobies on the street.”
Reducing the number of leaks had a number of advantages that go beyond just saving water.
The extra work has been good for local contractors. In one case, a Hutt contractor was looking at laying off staff but was able to avoid doing that.
The water saved would contribute to helping Wellington avoid tough water restrictions this summer.
The region needed to save 7.4 million litres daily to significantly reduce the chance of tough water restrictions this summer.
Wellington Water was on target to be able to deliver that by reducing leaks.
Wellington Water’s latest quarterly report notes that: “Achieving a 7.4 MLD [million litres a day] reduction in Water Loss would reduce the chance of a drinking water emergency to less than 3%, and the chance of level 4 to approximately 12%.”
Although Wellington Water did not usually receive many compliments, Haskell said staff were pleased to see their hard work paying off.
She was appreciative of the extra money provided by councils and also the effort put in by residents to reduce water use over summer.
Latest leak figures
The backlog of leaks is sitting at 1793 – compared with 3007 on May 23, and 3366 in January. In mid February it was 3415
Last financial year, Wellington Water fixed 8042 leaks – it is already at 7999.
Last April it fixed around 600 leaks, this April it jumped to around 900.
Wellington City Council invested an extra $2 million. It is estimated the additional fixes are saving around 2.36 million litres of water per day – which adds up to the equivalent of 2466 households water use.
It had fixed 839 leaks fixed in Porirua over the past financial year, which had halved the backlog.
It has fixed 2675 leaks in Hutt City this financial year.