‘Massive disruption’: Wellington faces six-month wait and a $53 million bill to fix Moa Point
Wednesday, 20 May 2026
It will be at least six months before the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant is fully operational again, after its catastrophic failure during the peak of summer resulted in sewage pouring into Wellington’s south coast.
The costs of the recovery and the work that’s required will be approximately $53.5 million, Wellington City Council chief strategy and financial officer Andrea Reeves said.
She said the bypass and outfall project that would continue into late 2027 after the Moa Point plant was up and running would be $10.9m of that. The council would be looking at recovering as much cost as possible through insurance.
Wellington City Council and Wellington Water on Wednesday released a roadmap with a clear timeline to getting the plant up and running after February’s flooding.
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The plant has been operating in a limited capacity since floodwaters hit on February 4, with screened wastewater continuing to be discharged through the long outfall pipe into Cook Strait while repairs are carried out.
Wellington mayor Andrew Little said the roadmap would provide communities and businesses affected by the outage with greater certainty about when the plant would be restored.
“The failure … has caused massive disruption to people, communities and businesses who are connected to the south coast,” he said.
It was a turning point in the recovery of the plant, Little said.
Wellington Water chief operating officer Charles Barker said November remained the key milestone for the recovery effort, when the plant is expected to resume full treatment processes.
“We’ll report against these milestones so people can track progress and hold us to account,” he said.
“A key date for the community to hold us to is November, when major recovery works are expected to be complete and we’ll be able to start sending wastewater through full treatment processes.
“Secondary treatment - including biological treatment - will be restarted, which will gradually improve the quality of wastewater being discharged out to Cook Strait. “
The recovery programme involves nearly 30 separate projects aimed at safely bringing systems back online while also improving the plant’s resilience and reliability. The projects have to be sequenced to bring systems safely back online as quickly as possible, while also identifying opportunities to make improvements or refurbishments along the way.
He said there were some risks to the outlined programme,
“Everyone understands the complexity of the Iran war on shipping, but we've sought local supplies wherever possible, or in Australia to minimise that risk. There's also manufacturing - some of the plants equipment does need to be manufactured. ”
Barker said they were in a lucky position that the two significant projects, the UV project and the control system project, were already under way.
“So, we've been planning those for about a year. If they hadn't been under way, this recovery timeline would be very extended.”
Barker said from November the plant would be back in operation.
“It will be able to take day to day all of the required effluent that’s heading to it, and cope in the vast majority of cases with a heavy rainfall event.”
Work has already resumed on major upgrades that were under way before the flooding, including ultraviolet and electrical, instrumentation and control upgrades. Wellington Water said having equipment already procured or in production had accelerated the recovery timeline by several months.
Barker said teams had already restarted major upgrade projects that were under way before the flooding, including the UV and EIC (electrical, instrumentation and control) upgrades. With equipment already procured or being manufactured, work had been able to resume quickly - putting the recovery months ahead of where it would otherwise be.
Engineers were also working to address a design issue identified in a hydraulic report completed after the flooding.
Wellington Water warned there could still be occasional wastewater discharges through the plant’s shorter outfall pipe during periods of heavy rain while recovery work continues, although those events were expected to reduce as pumping capacity improves.
Seventy million litres of untreated wastewater had been released daily 1.8km off the south coast since, and 5m off the coast in heavy rain.
In February, the association for businesses on Wellington’s south coast called for financial relief from the council.
Destination KRL general manager Steven Walters said 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.
In March, Dot Loves Data spending data, using ANZ transactions, showed Lyall Bay hospitality spending down 40% this February compared to February 2025, while other retail such as apparel and hairdressing is down 24%. Big box retailers are down just 4.2%.
There has been other fallout, with Nick Leggett stepping down as chairperson of under fire Wellington Water following the pollution disaster.
Leggett, who was appointed to the utility in 2023, said “someone had to be accountable”.