Wellington sewage spill: Is it me, or does something stink here?

Friday, 6 February 2026

Andrea Vance is National Affairs Editor for The Post and Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: Absolute scorcher of a day – one of the very few in a shit summer – and what do we get? Shit. Actually. Washing up on the closed beaches we can’t use because Wellington’s harbour is once again swimming in sewage.

On Wednesday, rain crippled Moa Point wastewater treatment plant and now up to 70 million litres of untreated pooh will be polluting the Cook Strait every day for the foreseeable.

To layer irony onto irony, the plant meant to treat wastewater became a giant sewage geyser in the middle of an upgrade. That catastrophic failure happened while remedial work was being carried out.

Read more:

• Council knew sludge plant had 50% chance of cost blowout – bill to top $500m

• Councillors demand review after Wellington sludge plant budget blow-out

• ‘Stay out of the water’: Raw sewage spewing into sea off Wellington’s south coast

Now the Capital is (again) the butt of jokes about being New Zealand’s shittiest town.

But the problem isn’t limited to Wellington.

Across New Zealand, water infrastructure is a multibillion-dollar fiasco of epic proportions.

Bromley in Christchurch has been in odour crises since a 2021 fire. Seaview in Lower Hutt frequently leaves residents gagging.

Wellington Water loses 45% of treated water to leaks, around 77 million litres per day.

Auckland’s systems overflow during heavy rain, regularly closing beaches.

Queenstown suffered a Cryptosporidium outbreak in 2023 and now discharges treated effluent into the iconic Shotover River.

Dunedin had elevated lead levels in its water; and nationally, 22% of all water leaks away before reaching taps.

Boil water notices are a dime a dozen, and all this has happened since the 2016 Havelock North contamination killed four people and sickened thousands.

If the editor hadn’t limited me to three expletives per column I’d call it a poop-show.

The controversial Three Waters reforms proposed by the last government would have shifted water and wastewater management into 10 large regional entities to capture economies of scale and fix decades of under‑investment.

That plan was repealed ‒ with resulting delays ‒ in favour of the coalition’s Local Water Done Well policy to shift water and wastewater management into 42 entities.

As well as the resulting delays, councils are now forecasting tens of billions in water infrastructure costs, significantly higher than earlier estimates, and many councils are left to fund critical upgrades themselves, through rate rises or debt.

Meanwhile, the Government is moving to cap council rates increases at around 4%, further hamstringing local authorities’ ability to fund the very upgrades needed to stop waste, leaks and sewage discharges.

At the same time, the Government is easing planning rules and turbo‑charging housing growth, leaving councils to juggle thousands of new homes on top of crumbling water systems, while most of the cost falls on ratepayers rather than developers’ profit margins.

And while ratepayers are left holding the toilet brush, private contractors are coming up roses.

Wellington’s wastewater plants (Moa Point, Seaview, Western, and Porirua) are run by multinational Veolia under a multi-million-dollar contract, and years of scathing reports flagged repeated operational and management failures long before Wednesday’s disaster. (This French-owned company turns pooh to gold. It also manages services for councils across the country, including Auckland, Whanganui, Ruapehu, Central Hawke’s Bay, and Queenstown).

Yet independent reviewers going back years found understaffed plants, inexperienced operators, obsolete equipment, and a shocking lack of oversight.

Despite all this, Veolia’s contracts roll over to the new Tiaki Wai regional water entity in mid-2026.

Overpayment, duplication, and delays have been a persistent problem across Wellington Water, with multiple reports over the past five years highlighting that a number contractors were enjoying profits while the plants failed. Ratepayers will never know how much we overpaid.

Is it me, or does something stink here?