A former councillor says the agency responsible for the catastrophic sewage plant breakdown in Wellington is a “disastrous organisation plagued with failure”.
Two ex-councillors have come out in defence of previous council decisions around the Moa Point Wastewater Treatment Plant, which last week suffered a mechanical failure, sending millions of litres of raw sewage spewing into the ocean.
Wellingtonians have been warned not to swim, dive, fish or even walk along South Coast beaches for the next few months until the plant can be fixed. The cause of the malfunction has not yet been determined.
“Wellington Water was a disastrous organisation plagued with failure and contracted out the running of the Moa Point wastewater station to a French company,” Fleur Fitzsimons said on Ryan Bridge TODAY this morning.
Wellington City Council owned the plants, while Wellington Water was contracted to operate the region’s water services. Veolia was contracted to run Moa Point.
She said there were layers of “dysfunction” within the French company, acting more like a “corporate brand than a public entity”.
She believed Wellington Water was more interested in protecting itself as a brand than making sure it delivered properly.
“It is a deeply problematic organisation, and the whole corporate model certainly hasn’t helped Wellingtonians,” she said.
Both she and fellow former councillor, Greens MP Tamatha Paul, have challenged online assertions the council chose to fund cycleways at the expense of wastewater.
Fitzsimons said she wanted to clear the record as “there’s a lot of mischief being made”.
“There was never once a vote by the Wellington City Council when I was on it that didn’t accept every recommendation from Wellington Water about their funding and make sure that their funding was addressed.”
Paul said there was an option to give more money to Wellington Water during 2021 deliberations in the Long Term Plan Committee, but council understood the extra requested money was to be used on communications.
“I don’t think anyone around that table was prepared to hike up the rates for a communications campaign,” she said on Ryan Bridge TODAY.
She said the meeting was to affirm the decision they’d made to give Wellington Water the maximum amount they’d asked for “that they could deliver”.
“Every amount of money that Wellington Water has ever asked for since 2021, they have gotten.”
The 2021 meeting approved $147-208 million for Moa Point treatment plant upgrades - now the sludge plant - and $2.7 billion for pipe maintenance and upgrades.
She said both cycleways and wastewater were important, and that funding one was not taking away from the other.
Speaking to media at Parliament yesterday, Paul said, “private for-profit multinational companies should not be in charge of New Zealand’s critical public infrastructure.”
She said regional councils are responsible for enforcing and monitoring compliance, referencing the Government’s legislation to scrap regional councils.
With calls for an independent inquiry into the Moa Point incident, Wellington Water’s chief executive Pat Dougherty yesterday said they fully supported this.
“It is now clear that the inquiry will begin as soon as possible, and we will cooperate fully alongside our work to bring the plant back into operation.”
He said public health and safety remained their priority, and they would be giving the public regular updates on operations, health advice, and water sampling.
“We are also acutely aware of the impact of odour on the community, and do not take this lightly.”
Sammy Carter is a journalist for the New Zealand Herald covering news in the Wellington region. She has previously worked at the Rotorua Daily Post.