It will take Wellington City 6388 years to fix its broken pipes

Thursday, 24 October 2024

The pipes near councillor Diane Calvert's home in Khandallah were recently replaced, allowing the councillor a glimpse of the rusted insides of Wellington's ageing drinking water system. She says the council should be investing in pipes, rather than cycleways.

At the current rate of renewal, it will take Wellington City 6388 years to replace its broken pipe network.

Wellington Water chairperson Nick Leggett said it should serve as a wake-up call to the council and everyone living in the city.

The statistic is included in a report from an advisory group of regional mayors, headed by former Wellington mayor Dame Kerry Prendergast, which looked at options for a new water entity for Local Water Well Done.

Wellington City is not the only council that should be alarmed by the contents of the report. Porirua has a backlog that will take 5325 years and Hutt City 371 years.

The region’s leakiest city, Upper Hutt, has the quickest rate of renewals at 233 years.

Leggett said the situation had come about due to decades of underinvestment and if it was not addressed as a priority, there was a serious risk of “catastrophic” network failure.

Leggett had previously pointed out that if the region did not take the issue more seriously, it would undermine the Wellington economy. That is because cities like Wellington could face a ban on new builds because its infrastructure could not cope with more housing.

Wellington Water chair Nick Leggett hopes the realisation that it will take more than 6000 years to replace leaky pipes in Wellington City, should be a wake-up call for the council.

In October The Post reported that Wellington City was investing significantly less than other councils in the region on upgrading its dodgy pipes, some of which were more than 100 years old.

Some pipes in Wellington City are more than 100 years old.

Hutt City, with a population of 104,532 in the 2018 Census, plans to fork out $93 million this year to Wellington Water versus Wellington City’s $87m. But factoring in populations the numbers become starker. Hutt City works out at $896 annually per person, Porirua at $1319, Upper Hutt at $504 and Wellington at $431.

The ongoing leaks are also damaging to the environment, as it means treatment plants such as Moa Pt are not running efficiently and pose a significant risk to the environment.

A leak on the corner of Hunter St and Customhouse Quay.

Wellington City councillor Diane Calvert, who had seen first hand the state of the pipes in her own suburb of Khandallah, said the figure was alarming and highlighted the need for the council to prioritise expenditure wisely.

She said money spent on cycleways should have gone to pipes and the problem of underinvestment had been known for some time.

A recent attempt to increase the expenditure on pipes had been undermined by council staff who incorrectly said that Wellington Water’s contractors did not have the capacity to do the work, Calvert said.

Although the underinvestment was a long-running problem, Calvert believed the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake had accentuated the on-going problem of leaks in the city.

As well as underfunding pipe renewals, the council was also not funding new pipes to cope with the new houses the city needed to grow.

“It is something we have to grapple with as a city but the question is how fast and how can we do it (find extra money for pipe renewals and new pipes).”

The report said 21% of pipes across the region were in poor or very poor condition, as well as 1300 km of concrete asbestos pipes at high risk of failing.

“They are susceptible to sudden collapse because over time, water flow has washed out most of the asbestos fibres, which make up the inside lining of the pipe and provides them with much of their strength,” the report said.

Mayor Tory Whanau has been approached for comment.