Wellington Water mea culpa: Issues ‘bigger and gnarlier than we thought’

Friday, 13 June 2025

Wellington Water has apologised to Wellington City Council for its lack of transparency and mismanagement ‒ but insists it has come a long way in changing its culture.

Executive staff met with the council on Thursday to give an update, after damning value-for-money reports dropped three months ago. Board chairperson Nick Leggett was not present, as he was travelling.

Changing the structure to have more accountability at to the top, cutting back meeting hours, resetting contractor panels and changing the relationship with alliance partner Fulton Hogan were ways the organisation had changed, chief executive Pat Dougherty said.

“If you read any manager textbook, you don’t get better decisions made from a large group making decisions and not carrying any responsibility for it,” he said.

Dougherty said since taking over as boss, structural improvements had been the focus.

“The stones we turned over were bigger and gnarlier than we thought.”

Dougherty was quietly confident Wellington Water was in good shape and had noticed an “incredible transition” since starting as chief executive nine months ago.

It would take 15 years to deal with the backlog of repairs and renewals and the next generation was going to be paying the price for the past 30 years of underinvestment, he said.

Wellington households are forecast to pay an average of $7041 annually by mid-2033 for water bills, under the new regional water organisation being set up under Local Water Done Well.

Significant investment was needed and the new organisation would need to hit 110km to 120km a year of renewal for 20 to 30 years to catch up the backlog of pipes that needed replacing, Wellington Water assessments show.

Operating costs had tripled over the past five years and Wellington Water was paying three times more than average councils around New Zealand. But Dougherty said this was because of the increased work it was doing, not because unit rates had gone up.

Bill Bayfield, deputy chairperson of Wellington Water, said with less than 14 months to hand over to a new entity they were “hell-bent” on completing priorities so the new organisation could succeed.

Wellington Water has published 113 recommendations after analysing six reports since the 2019 fluoride report, including an internal report that had been buried.

Bayfield apologised to councillors around the table.

“I’ve been a director for 20 months, and even at the interview that appointed me it was quite clear that we all had work to do.”

Chief operating officer Charles Barker said every contractor and consultant now had a direct relationship with the entity.

There was a significant reduction in public leaks, decreasing from 936 in January last year to 140 now.