Fears Of Another Moa Point, As Scale Of Wastewater Plants Problem Revealed

Russell
Palmer, Political Reporter

The
water regulator says about a third of New Zealand’s
wastewater plant consents have expired, and the risk of
another Moa Point disaster happening again is
unknown.

A failure
at the treatment plant on Wellington’s south coast a week
ago has been spilling 70 million litres of untreated
sewage a day into Cook Strait.

Labelled an environmental
disaster by the city’s mayor, Wellington Water has
warned it could
be months before the plant is operating again and the
waters are again swimmable.

Taumata Arowai was set up
as the new water regulator in 2021 after the
Havelock North campylobacter outbreak, and key leaders
appeared before a select committee on Wednesday, a week
after the spill began.

Chief executive Allan Prangnell
said the watchdog did not have a direct role in managing the
320 wastewater treatment plants around the country, with
that responsibility falling to the regional councils – and
soon, the water service entities set up under the
Local Water Done Well reforms.

“We have an
interest in what’s happened, obviously share the concerns of
the community and Wellington Water and all of the operators
and actors in it – the first priority there is to stabilise
and find out what happened, and the responsible agencies are
doing that,” he told RNZ.

“We are staying close to any
reviews or inquiries that may play out, because we want to
know if what happened in Moa Point might happen elsewhere,
and what the signals would be at the top of the cliff, so
that we don’t have a situation like this again.”

In
the committee, he painted a worrying picture of the status
of the network.

“There has been a backing up of
expired consents for some time now, and about a third of
those plants are operating on expired consents – some of
them as long as 20 years,” he told MPs, “so that’s a pretty
big indicator that there’s a problem.

“And when
re-consenting is happening, it’s not being built – and I
think some of the reason for that is by the time you get to
the other side of the consenting process, the cost for the
community is rejected.”

The treatment plants were not
the only problem, with underground pipes accounting for
about 80 percent of the overall three waters (drinking
water, wastewater and stormwater) network.

“A lot of
it is sitting there, and it’s underground and difficult to
know what condition it’s in. And while councils [generally
know] the condition of drinking water pipes, for obvious
reasons, the information base on wastewater reticulation is
poorer and often unknown.

“That’s a system concern
that we have been highlighting.”

He
said the Commerce Commission’s economic regulation role
would see information collected on the condition of the
pipes, and would in future be fed back to Taumata Arowai and
collated for public release.

The aim was to help
prevent another Moa Point, he told RNZ.

“That’s the
point of it exactly… by making that information available
directly to communities allows the public to know what’s
going on locally, and to raise the issues directly with
their council or their water operator if they are
concerned.

“If there are overflows happening, the
community should be told.”

More than half the overall
wastewater overflows happening around the country were not
consented, he said.

“Right now, the bit the public
usually sees is when wastewater overflows, so it might come
into a beach in Auckland summer, or it might overflow in the
network, and that will happen – what we want to do though is
bring it into the light.”

Head of systems, strategy
and performance Sara McFall said in some places the
overflows were completely prohibited – which meant they were
“completely invisible”.

“We have no reporting of them,
the public is unlikely to get notifications, so what we’re
putting in place is requirement that everyone has consenting
and everyone is reporting and notifying the public, which
will be a real change.

“The bar is quite low at the
moment, so this is the first step.”

Prangnell expected
New Zealand’s first
ever nationwide standards – introduced last year – would
help with transparency, monitoring and
enforcement.

The standards would apply as consenting
for assets came up for renewal, moving consent conditions
for discharging treated waste, for example, to nationally
consistent health and environmental limits.

“What
we’ve got right now is bespoke arrangements in each of those
320-odd treatment plants across the country, so very
difficult to answer the question of risk, because they were
all built differently, and they’re all performing
differently – as we move to a standardized system and
standardized technology, I think it’s much easier to have a
grip on the risk profile across the
country.”

Authorities would be required to grant a
consent so long as the system met the standard’s
requirements.

He said the new norms were developed
using advice from the best technical experts.

“Doesn’t
overcook it, doesn’t undercook it, and we’ll get to a far
more efficient system – probably strip off nearly a billion
dollars – about $800m to $1b – out of just the consenting
process alone.”

Zero target for untreated
water

But for now, the picture was
murky.

“Murky because we don’t have a complete
picture, and also because we know with all of those bespoke
arrangements, there will be a range of situations across the
country.”

Prangnell told the committee Taumata Arowai
had made “huge headway” into the job of assuring local
communities their drinking water was safe.

Since the
agency was set up, the number of New Zealanders drinking
from public supplies without basic treatment and protozoa
barriers had more than halved from about 750,000 to under
300,000, he said.

“We would anticipate getting that
down to zero within the next 12 to 18 months.”

Allan
Prangnell said the minister had offered to give them more
powers, and national standards should soon help curb
costs.

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