Māori angry that stream still treated as a drain

Friday, 5 July 2024

When Kara Puketapu-Dentice buried his beloved great-uncle, Teri Puketapu, he had to stand at the Seaview urupā where you can smell odour from the nearby Seaview Wastewater Treatment Plant.

It was both highly offensive and symbolic of what he sees as a much bigger issue.

The chief executive of Te Ātiawa Taranaki Whānui, Puketapu-Dentice says Māori across New Zealand are angered by the on-going disrespect for waterways like Waiwhetū.

The urupā is situated on the banks of the stream, which only 60 years ago was a major source of kai for his ancestors. The consent to discharge into the stream expired in February 2018.

Both the stream and Te Awa Kairangi/Hutt River, which the stream flows into, havesuffered from decades of neglect as the local council allowed raw sewage to be pumped into the river and industrial waste into the stream.

When the Seaview Wastewater Treatment Plant was upgraded in 2001 there were promises that the overflow of treated effluent into the Waiwhetū Stream would stop.

Instead, it increased steadily over the years and is now at a point, Puketapu-Dentice says, where enough is enough.

Hutt City Council even proposed using Te Awa Kairangi as an alternative overflow source.

Māori view waterways as a source of kai that should be cherished and protected, he says.

“Before the arrival of European settlers, the Waiwhetū Stream was an integral part of a network of waterways that our iwi and hapū relied upon.

“It was more than a water source, it was a highway for transport, a cupboard of food, and a cradle for spirituality.”

Early settlers treated the stream as a drain and industries based in Naenae and Seaview showed no respect for the awa, where eels had once been abundant.

“For decades, our awa had been the lifeblood of our community, a bountiful source providing food, a sacred place for blessing our newborn tamariki, and a natural highway that reflected the mana of our people.”

By the 1970s it was effectively an industrial drain, Puketapu-Dentice says.

“In 1972 it was famed for catching on fire due to the sheer quantity of flammable pollutants being discharged into our awa.

“The pollution transformed the stream, threatening the health of our community and disrupting the delicate ecological balance that had sustained us for centuries.”

The 1990s marked a turning point for the iwi as the community and the council began taking greater responsibility for water quality.

The “relentless industrial abuse” had by then severely impacted both the health of the stream and local Māori, he says.

The organisation Friends of Waiwhetū Stream has also called for the end to discharges of treated effluent into the stream.

Wellington Water’s network management general manager Jeremy McKibbin said although the discharge consent expired in 2018, the discharges could continue under previous consent conditions until a decision was made on an application for a new consent.

“We continue to monitor the affected area and work closely with iwi leaders on a solution to minimise the environmental impact of intermittent discharges to the Waiwhetu Stream.”

The discharges are caused by the deteriorating condition of the 18km outfall pipe that takes treated effluent from the plant in Seaview to the Pencarrow coast.

As the pipe ages, engineers are concerned that if they increase the pressure, the pipe will burst. Estimates of how much a new pipe would cost range from $700 million to $1 billion.

An Evening Post story was headlined New plant for cleaner, greener sewage disposal in September 2001.

“Nobody walking past the plant should be able to smell it,” the story states.

The council was at that time pumping untreated sewage into the Waiwhetū Stream four to six times a year.

The plant’s manager promised that would end. “If for some reason the 18km outfall pipeline has to be shut down, the effluent will be discharged at the mouth of Hutt River, but the discharge is expected to be a lot cleaner than river floodwater.”

By April 2010, local Māori were crying foul. The city council had spent $21m removing industrial metals, including lead and zinc and other contaminants from the stream’s bed in Seaview.

The council was, however, continuing to discharge untreated raw sewage into Waiwhetū Stream during heavy rainfall.

Greater Wellington Regional Council granted the city council consent to continue discharges, which occurred when sewage infiltrated stormwater pipes that overflowed into the stream.

At that time, Te Atiawa elder Teri Puketapu told the regional council that years of such discharges had turned the stream into an 'open drain'.

Iwi had opposed discharges for many years. He described the situation as a 'deep abhorrence' to local Māori, and called for all discharges to stop. The discharges destroy the wairua, or spiritual life force and ecological values of the stream, he said.

It was a message Puketapu would repeat until he died last year, aged 84.

In recent years, it has been treated effluent pumped in to the stream but Puketapu-Dentice says it is still unacceptable.

Puketapu-Dentice is in a unique position to comment on how the council and Wellington Water can find a solution.

Although he now holds a significant position in Māoridom, he previously worked for the Hutt City Council where one of his responsibilities was RiverLink.

Completing a major project like a new 18km outfall pipe is a major challenge.

The cost is likely to be beyond what Hutt City can afford — the pipe also serves Upper Hutt and its council would also contribute — and getting resource consent would also be challenging.

The Government, he says, has to look at the big picture of how such projects can be funded and why the four treatment plants — Seaview, Moa Point, Porirua and Karori — all had major issues.

The price tag of up to $1b for a new outfall pipe will at least double by the time it is built, he predicts.

“Until we change the model and seriously consider how we fund and deliver these big projects we are not getting the solution we need.”

Long term predictions also suggest that by the end of the century, parts of Seaview, where the treatment plant is will be inundated.

“Is it worth spending $2b considering we are facing sea level rise?”

Waiwhetū facts

˗ Treated effluent has been discharged into the stream 24 times in the last 18 months.

˗ When Europeans arrived, the stream was a major fishery with a significant population of whitebait and eels. In 1876, The Evening Post reported an 11 kilogram eel had been caught.

˗ A 2022 Greater Wellington study of the stream concluded: “Overall, water quality and macroinvertebrate health is generally poor in the Waiwhetū Stream, a reflection of the surrounding land cover and history of heavy industry in the catchment.”

˗ The 9km stream springs from the hills above Naenae and Wingate.

˗ In Naenae, 2.3km of the stream is in a concrete channel, which seriously compromises water quality.

˗ In 2021, Friends of the Waiwhetū Stream said it had collected 240 50-litre bags of rubbish from the stream.The rubbish included traffic cones, a cash register, a swivel chair chair, an armchair and a pig’s head.

˗ The amount of plastic in the stream has decreased since supermarkets stopped using plastic bags. Plastic bags have, however, been replaced by face masks.

˗ In 2001, The Evening Post reported that the stream was contaminated by DDT, zinc, petrol, oil and lead.

˗ In 2010 the council removed 56,000 tonnes of toxic waste from the bed of the stream.

˗ The 18km outfall pipe, which serves 150,000 residents in the Hutt Valley, was commissioned in 1962. The council has looked at how it could be replaced, and how long it would last, since the early 1990s. There is no money budgeted for its replacement.