Wastewater upgrades are needed to help prevent the bacteria, which can cause vomiting or diarrhoea, from making their way into freshwater.
At least half of the region’s rivers and streams have had unacceptable levels of E.coli for several years now.
The existing wastewater network is challenged by a limited capacity to deal with population growth and more frequent wet weather events from climate change.
The other big problem is cross-connections. This is when private wastewater connections have been incorrectly plumbed into the stormwater network.
Greater Wellington Regional Council commissioned consultancy firm GHD to assess the cost and affordability of fixing the problem.
“Unfortunately, both these major wastewater challenges are expensive and difficult to fix,” GHD’s report from May this year said.
“Upgrading the existing network to better cope with population growth and heavy rain events will cost billions of dollars and form the bulk of the costs covered in this study.”
The report estimated up to $419 million was needed for the Te Awarua-o-Porirua water catchment and up to $3.10b for Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
This equates to a per-household cost of between $10,350 and $22,900.
A decision on how to pay for the improvements is yet to be made but costs could be met through new funding mechanisms like targeted rates, water user charges and infrastructure growth charges similar to Auckland’s Watercare.
The water quality of Porirua Harbour has suffered severely from wastewater discharges. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The regional council is the regulator for the new E. coli targets set out in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 (NPS-FM).
Council chairman Daran Ponter said the bill for the upgrades would land with city councils.
“They’ve got a bit of a problem coming their way.... if people want to swim at the beach, swim at the rivers, take kaimoana, all of those things are off the menu effectively if we breach the standards. It becomes a public health issue.”
A Wellington Water spokesman said the cost of the wastewater upgrades was factored into the “unconstrained investment advice” given to councils and the outgoing government. This advice equated to the company needing $1 billion annually for the next 30 years to get on top of the region’s water woes.
Porirua Mayor Anita Baker said her council was already in trouble.
“We can’t afford to do Three Waters now let alone what the regional council is going to do.
Baker said the Government needed to wake up and realise there was a “bloody problem” in New Zealand.
Clearly frustrated, she pleaded for water infrastructure to be taken off the council’s books.
National has pledged to repeal Labour’s Three Waters reforms within 100 days of taking office and restore what it calls local control. Under National, councils will be free to go their own way, provided they meet minimum quality standards and levels of investment.
Councils will have the freedom to voluntarily amalgamate into an entity that looks a lot like one of the entities Labour proposed minus the co-governance component: something that owns the infrastructure, has a separate balance sheet, and borrows heavily to invest in new pipes.
But it’s unclear whether the incoming Government will keep the freshwater E. coli targets.
On the campaign trail, the party said it would introduce or update National Policy Statements and National Environmental Standards for freshwater, housing, energy, transport, and water to support investment in infrastructure within environmental limits.
A National Party spokesperson said once the government has been formed, newly appointed ministers will meet with the heads of departments to start putting their policies in place.
The new E. coli targets are currently being consulted on as part of proposed changes to the regional council’s Natural Resources Plan.
As well as reflecting standards set out in the NPS-FM, the changes are also the result of the Whaitua programme which has involved collaboration with mana whenua, communities, territorial authorities and Wellington Water.
The NPS-FM does not set a deadline for the new standards to be implemented but if the timeline is considered “long-term”, interim targets must be set.
The regional council has proposed a deadline of 2040 although acknowledges this is ambitious.
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
