Wellington Water fails to meet performance targets, cost to fix water leaks rises

A damning Wellington Water performance report suggests the cost to fix the city’s leaks has dramatically increased, as the water authority lags behind performance targets set by the Department of Internal Affairs.

The report, covering the three months to January, shows response and resolution times have “deteriorated”.

Wellington Water had a target response time for urgent drinking water callouts of 60 minutes or less, and managed 227 minutes. Median resolution times, which were meant to be four hours or less, averaged 19.3 hours.

Wellington Water claims it is "currently not funded to the level needed to reduce the backlog of work" and improve response times. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The report from Wellington Water states the worsening results are a “reversal of the trend seen in other cities, where urgent response and resolution times have continued to improve over the past three years”.

Non-urgent callouts faced significant delays as well. Wellington Water spent 948.4 hours on average to respond to non-urgent drinking water callouts, despite having a target of less than 36 hours. The council-controlled organisation had a goal to fix non-urgent issues within five days, yet averaged 56.1 days to do so.

In a statement, acting Wellington Water chief executive Kevin Locke said the agency can only do the work it is funded to do.

“Historical underinvestment in the assets has created an increasing backlog of work, which has a direct impact on how quickly we are able to respond to a job. While we would like to improve our response times to meet the targets the council has set for us, we are currently not funded to the level needed to reduce the backlog of work and improve our response times,” he said.

In December, Wellington City Council (WCC) agreed to provide $1 million to Wellington Water, with an additional $1 million by March 15 if the funding had been utilised and performance reports were handed out.

A separate report from Wellington Water, from February 29, detailed 74 leaks that had been fixed since January 29. Wellington Water had spent $365,000 on leaks as at the end of February - suggesting the cost to repair leaks has gone up.

The numbers mean it costs roughly $4,932 to fix a leak, compared to a November estimate of $3,000. Roughly three years ago, the average cost to fix a leak was $1,500.

It’s not the first time Wellington Water had failed to meet set targets. In July, NZME reported Wellington Water had only renewed 18 kilometres of pipes out of a goal of 100.

Councillor Tim Brown, who chairs the WCC’S Kōrau Tūāpapa Environment and Infrastructure Committee, told NZME he was unsure why costs to repair leaks had risen so much: “In terms of explanation as to how this sort of cost increase is happening - we have none.”

Brown added the delays in responding to callouts were “unacceptable.”

He opposed the WCC’s December agreement to provide Wellington Water with more cash on a performance basis. He suggested Wellington Water should “absolutely” do better, before they get more.

The reports come as Wellington has been under level two water restrictions for months, partially as a significant portion of the region’s water is lost due to leaks.

Councillor Ben McNulty posted to X, formerly Twitter, saying the council was trying to work with Wellington Water to engage private plumbers on low priority leaks “but things are moving at a glacial pace on this front.”

McNulty said he’s expecting a “bloody good explanation” from Wellington Water, which is set to front up to the report’s findings at a Wellington City Council meeting on Wednesday.

Azaria Howell is a Wellington-based multimedia reporter with an eye across the region. She joined NZME in 2022 and has a keen interest in city council decisions, social housing and transport.