South coast businesses demand relief after Moa Point sewage failure

Tuesday, 17 February 2026

The association for businesses on Wellington’s south coast is calling for financial relief from the Wellington City Council over the Moa Point sewage plant fiasco.

The comments from Destination KRL general manager Steven Walters came during a public meeting on Monday evening. The association represents businesses in the suburbs of Kilbirnie, Rongotai and Lyall Bay.

The timing of the failure couldn’t have been worse for local dive shops, fishing stores and cafés, with some already reporting a 96% reduction in business since it happened, Walters said.

During summer, some businesses could make more in a single February week than in all of July. “[They] critically depend on people coming to the beach using the services and products,” he said.

But Wellington mayor Andrew Little said after the meeting that would depend on the Government's inquiry into how sewage inundated most of the plant during a storm almost two weeks ago. 'We need to see whether there was any fault before you'd consider any questions that are being raised by them.'

The public meeting - called by the Green Party’s Wellington MPs, Julie-Anne Genter and Tamatha Paul - packed the Performing Arts Centre at St Patrick’s College in Kilbirnie, having been moved from Parrotdog bar at Lyall Bay because of expected crowd numbers.

The calls by Paul and local resident Eugene Doyle to hold the inquiry in public received the loudest cheers throughout the 90-minute meeting.

As well as Walters, Little and wastewater expert David Romilly spoke at the meeting.

Wellington Water acting chairperson Bill Bayfield and chief operating officer Charles Barker appeared as a last-minute substitute for chief executive Pat Dougherty who was stuck in Nelson because of the weather. Their attendance marked a U-turn on the company’s earlier refusal to appear at the meeting because of its “political nature”.

Barker said divers had inspected the first 300m of the long outfall pipe and it appeared to be intact. The priority was to get the flow of the pipe back up to capacity. 'There's something that is preventing optimal flow going through the long outfall.'

Hours before, the Government announced the inquiry but did not say if it would involve public hearings. A Crown Review Team comprising of water services sector executives would investigate the causes and make recommendations.

“The failure of a key part of our capital city’s critical wastewater infrastructure and the ensuing impact on communities, the local economy and the environment are completely unacceptable,” said Local Government Minister Simon Watts.

“The public is owed the assurance that we understand what led to this failure and that we are taking steps to prevent it from happening again.”

Nick Leggett resigned as Wellington Water’s chairperson on Sunday, saying it was necessary to restore public trust and underline the seriousness of the sewage spill.

Little also said there would not be an emergency rates hike because of the plant’s failure.

Untreated sewage continued to pour into Cook Strait through the long outfall pipe at 1.8km from the shore, and intermittently at the Tarakena Bay short outfall pipe since Monday morning, with Wellington Water estimating the latter to continue for at least the next 24 hours.

Fierce winds and rain overnight meant 2.3 million litres of wastewater flowed through the short outfall pipe into the sea for three hours between 10.30 pm on Sunday and 1.30am on Monday.

Mana whenua Taranaki Whānui had called for “urgent and accountable action”.

In a statement on Monday, the iwi said: “The public deserves clear and timely information. We expect transparency regarding the cause of this failure, the repair timeline, and the environmental impacts.”

Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air