Moa Point failure a ‘nightmare’ for Wellington businesses, group says

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Moa Point failure in Wellington, has been a “nightmare” for the south coast community, a business group says, and a financial package is vital for some businesses’ survival.

It comes as Wellington City Councillors approved a financial support package of $200,000 – with one-off grants of up to $35,000 available.

In a council meeting on Thursday, Destination KRL general manager Steve Walters said the grant would be a “a matter of survival” for some.

“[The grant] will be totally well-used for businesses that are really struggling on the south coast.”

Walters said over six billion litres of raw sewage had spewed into the sea since February 4, when the wastewater treatment plant flooded.

That had resulted in a “massive” drop in visitors to the South Coast and people avoiding the water, especially Lyall Bay, he said.

“The Moa Point plant failure, it’s a nightmare – on top of a really tough period for businesses – that should never have happened.”

He said that 25 businesses in the area had lost between 25 and 70 per cent of their revenue due to the disaster.

Three months on, businesses hadn’t been told anything about when exactly the plant would be fixed, he said.

Ocean Hunter owner Hugh Collins, who previously said the sewage disaster was “gutwrenching” said he was reducing his own income to keep staff employed, but could no longer do that.

“I’ve got a newborn son, he’s five weeks old, I can’t support my family if this continues and we don’t see support.”

His business – which specialised in spear-fishing, free-diving and scuba-diving equipment, relied on activity in summer months, to get through winter.

Collins urged the council to take another look at the criteria for the grants which mandated a 50 per cent reduction in revenue to be eligible for the grants.

“If we miss out on this kind of funding, we will go under. I won’t have an income, I’ll have to let go our staff, where there will be six of us unemployed. And that’s just the truth of it.”

In order to be eligible, businesses would have to apply for the grants and meet certain criteria, including being located within a “high-impact zone”, or directly reliant on ocean activities, be Wellington-owned with fewer than 20 employees, and operating for at least a year.

Councillors decided to increase the amount of the financial package from $150,000 to $200,000. About $150,000 comes from the City Growth Fund, and $50,000 from organisational savings.

Chief Operating Officer Charles Barker told Local Democracy Reporting that it was out of the council-controlled organisation’s mandate to deviate from set budgets, and was up to the councils’ whether to reallocate funds.

Councillors also passed an amendment which would allow the chief executive through the mayor to deviate from criteria in a minor way, including that businesses needed to demonstrate a 50 per cent reduction in revenue,

Northern ward councillor Andrea Compton said while she didn’t ordinarily back corporate welfare, communities were in a critical state through “no fault of their own”.

Eastern Ward councillor Jonny Osborne said he was happy to support the package, adding that “certainty” around the recovery was vital.

“This is a complicated and a complex system, I know it’s not easy, but I do want to put on the record that I really want to see Wellington Water get that recovery plan out as soon as they can so these businesses can start planning for this disruption and when it will end.”

Wellington Water said it would provide a detailed timeline of repair works of the Moa Point plant to the council in the next two weeks.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand