Burst residential water pipes and a slurry of dirty water spewing into a popular Wellington beach are just the latest issues in a string of incidents plaguing Wellington water authorities.
A burst water pipe in the suburb of Kingston yesterday caused the road to buckle, and homes were without water for several hours as dirty water poured down the street. That incident also caused silty water to pour into Island Bay beach as locals swam.
Wellington City Council tweeted a warning advising people to stay out of the water until it was deemed safe, but there were no signs or council staff at the beach when 1 News was there.
Island Bay residents Kira Hundleby and Wyeth Chalmers who were at the beach with their baby said they had no idea that the council had issued a warning.
"If we're not supposed to be here it'd be nice to know that" Mr Chalmers said.
Environmental management group Water New Zealand says Wellington has some of the oldest water pipes in the country, and some are in the poorest condition of any main centre.
In December about five million litres of sewage spilled into Wellington harbour after a major pipe burst.
A month later.. a pipe burst at a treatment plant in Moa Point, sludge is still being trucked to landfill 24 hours a day
And this year, contaminated water flowing from a stream into Owhiro Bay tested up to 43 times over the safe limit for E-coli. Authorities are warning people not to swim in the stream or near the stream mouth.
Owhiro Bay resident Eugene Doyle says locals are experiencing anguish and anger over the situation.
"It's an absolute disgrace, Wellington Water and Wellington City Council aren't doing their job", Mr Doyle said.
Wellington Water says the Owhiro Bay issue was caused by residential sewage pipes which had accidentally been connected to stormwater pipes. They said they'd identified the pipes and fixed them.
But residents say contamination issues at Owhiro Bay beach date back to at least 2008.
When asked if the Wellington City Council was to blame for issuing consents to properties with sewage issues, Wellington City Councils' water infrastructure manager Sean Rush said it was something he'd have to follow up on.
"Certainly we need to understand how the consenting process is working and failing because we're getting too many of these cross connections causing mayhem with our system. Either consents have been given and shouldn't have or there's no process at all," Mr Rush said.
He said the Owhiro Bay issue had probably been put in the "too hard bin" which was why the issues were taking so long to fix.
Wellington's Water infrastructure is owned and managed by three separate entities, which Mr Doyle says is causing major confusion.
"We want to push them together and say sort this out now" he said.
Greater Wellington Regional Council Chair Daran Ponter said the cost of fixing Wellington's water problems would be massive.
"I can't estimate, I don't even want to go there, it's going to be a horrendous figure", Mr Ponter said.
Wellington Water's CEO Colin Crampton said it isn't realistic to replace all of Wellington's aging pipes straight away and it will happen over decades rather than years.
"We have some of the oldest pipes in New Zealand. Some of the pipes were put in in the 1890's but that doesn't mean they're in trouble, what we've got to do is look at them check their condition and replace them when they're due to be replaced."
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