Wellington Water to ask for more money, sooner than expected

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Wellington Water boss Pat Dougherty, right, will tell mayor Tory Whanau, left, and the Wellington City Council more money is needed. Councillor Ben McNulty, centre, is one willing to find cuts to get the money.

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The familiar ring of Wellington Water asking for more money is set to chime the new year in but this time with the revelation that “we have not been getting value for money”.

The long summer break officially ends on Tuesday for Wellington mayor Tory Whanau and her elected council, with four separate briefings and workshops packed into an afternoon. They cover just some of the new and continuing issues set to make 2025 a busy year at the Wellington City Council, which will have to juggle a bulging calendar with a looming election later in 2025.

Briefing one is about the implications of new ratings valuations, which will be released in coming days saying what each house is worth and affecting the amount of rates each pays. Number two is an annual plan workshop after a series of issues in late 2024 meant the 10-year-council plan had to be redone, this time with a Crown-appointed observer watching over them.

Briefing three is on water reforms following the National-led Government ditching the past government’s Three Waters reforms and essentially telling councils pipes are their problems to fix but making them set up new entities, with greater borrowing power, to handle.

Finally, new Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty will go to the council saying the water utility, which currently runs most of the region’s sewerage infrastructure, needs more money sooner than planned.

He confirmed that it would mean the council having to find more money in the budget for the next financial year but on Monday did not want to give figures ahead of telling the council.

A car suffered $6000 worth of damage when a pipe burst beneath it on Thorndon Quay.

But he said his talk to the Wellington City Council on Tuesday would be along the same lines as a November presentation to the Greater Wellington Regional Council where he said the entity needed another $39 million from its six shareholding councils, largely for IT systems upgrades.

Dougherty also said it was “increasingly clear [Wellington Water] has not been getting value for money” and there were now areas the utility had found where it could get better value. He refused to give details before telling city councillors on Tuesday.

In 2024 The Post revealed the cost to fix a leak had increased from an average of $1500 in 2021 to $4932.

Wellington Water staff working on a water leak at the corner of Jervois Quay and Hunter Street in 2023.

Wellington City councillor Ben McNulty said the $1.8 billion the council planned to put towards pipes in its 10-year plan was still well short of the $2.5b that was needed, and most was promises for future councils to spend. The first three years of the plan saw just 18% of the total spent, he said.

Funding pipes had to be the top priority even if that meant cutting spending from the long-term plan, he said.

He hoped the savings Wellington Water now said it could make was because it had found better ways to work, but said it would be “disappointing“ if they could have been found earlier.

Mayor Tory Whanau was asked whether she would support more money going to Wellington Water in the next financial year and if there was any planned spending that could be cut from the long-term plan to find the money,

'It would be premature to comment on the suitability of any request until this advice is received and the rationale behind it understood,“ she said in an emailed statement.