Source: Radio New Zealand
A Breaker Bay local with a long history of fighting for clean water in Wellington explains why the sewage dump is so catastrophic, for health, history, and the environment.
Ray Ahipene-Mercer with his jar of 24-year-old water from Moa Point sewage treatment plant. Sharon Brettkelly
Ray Ahipene-Mercer keeps a jar of 24-year-old water in his refrigerator, labelled ‘Moa Point Final Effluent’.
“It looks like a glass of water, hasn’t got a single bug in it, no discolouration, nothing,” he says.
It is a memento of the new sewage plant which he battled over for years as the co-leader of the Wellington Clean Water Campaign.
But nearly 30 years after that successful campaign to stop the dumping of raw sewage in the sea, it is happening again.
Since last Wednesday, more than 600 million litres of untreated sewage have poured into the water off the south coast after a catastrophic failure of Moa Point, the city’s main treatment plant.
On a sparkling summer day Ahipene-Mercer looks out from his Breaker Bay home just around the corner from the plant and the bays are empty.
“I’m looking at the water about 50 metres away, it’s beautiful and yet underneath it there is this darkness. There is not a person walking the dog, having a walk, swimming, surfing, nothing,” he tells The Detail.
The former city councillor is angry, not just about the health risks to humans, but the damage to the environment and risks to the kororā, and to historic Māori sites.
“Toilet water is now brushing up against historic sites at Tarakina Bay. One of the reasons this campaign in the 80s was so successful, we married Māori concerns and Pākehā concerns together and that’s why we won that campaign,” Ahipene-Mercer says.
“I’m very angry, because of all this work we did. It’s not in vain however because Wellingtonians have responded magnificently.”
After a catastrophic failure last Wednesday at Moa Point, Wellington’s main treatment plant, more than 600 million litres of untreated sewage has poured into the water off the south coast. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The plant failed early last Wednesday morning during a bout of heavy rain. With the threat of more bad weather this weekend, there are fears the situation could get worse.
‘It’s going to get smellier’
The Post journalist Tom Hunt has been writing about Wellington’s wastewater woes for years and is experiencing first-hand the effects of days of raw sewage flowing into the sea.
“It gets worse the longer it’s there and it’s apparently going to get smellier as well,” he tells The Detail.
“I live not far from the tip and it was a still night last night and I could pick up a faint smell,” he says. “They’ve got these tanker trucks that Wellington’s quite familiar with because in covid time there was another pipe failure and they’d take the wastewater to the tip and they were called ‘turd taxis’. They’re just back and forth ferrying all the stuff out of the olympic-sized swimming pool room and just clearing that out and taking it to the tip.”
Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty broke the news last Wednesday that a room in the plant was three metres deep in sewage, blowing the electrics and badly damaging or destroying equipment.
In the immediate aftermath raw sewage was flowing through a short outfall to five metres off the coast but it is now going through a longer 1.8 kilometre pipe.
“But it is still untreated sewage … and for the foreseeable future we will have effectively raw sewage being pumped off the south coast very near a marine sanctuary not far from a nesting area,” Hunt says.
It could be months before the sea on the south coast is safe for walking, swimming and collecting kaimoana.
It brings back memories for Hunt, who grew up around the south coast of the polluted waters in the 1980s.
“That was a different time when the south coast was not a desirable place to be.”
He says now they’re “back in that for a mystery reason, we still don’t know what caused it.”
Hunt explains the numerous reports of warnings and abatement notices issued to the operator, French-owned Veolia which is paid roughly $17 million a year by Wellington Water to run the plant.
He says it is too soon to say who is at fault and a full inquiry will impel people to give evidence.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
