Story by Sarah McMillan cvnznews.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mayor Andrew Little, who lives in the neighbourhood and therefore has had the privilege of inhaling this civic masterpiece firsthand, has called for an independent inquiry into what he describes as a \u201ccatastrophic failure\u201d and an \u201cenvironmental disaster\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a sewage plant processing the sewage for a big city, and it has completely failed,\u201d Little said, in what may be the understatement of the decade. \u201cIt just completely stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, the volumes flowing through the Moa Point plant were within safe limits. The system simply decided it had had enough \u2014 a blockage or \u201csome other factor\u201d, as officials delicately put it, brought the whole operation to a halt. Wellington\u2019s infrastructure, it seems, has once again chosen chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Residents are furious, and Little says he shares their frustration. \u201cThis is my neighbourhood\u2026 where I walk my dog, where I kayak and swim,\u201d he said, proving that even mayors are not immune to the consequences of a city\u2019s pipes giving up on life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Authorities are scrambling to warn the public that the coastline is now a no\u2011go zone for swimming, dog\u2011walking, or collecting seafood \u2014 though Little admits some people will inevitably ignore the signs. Wellingtonians are famously hardy, but even the bravest might think twice before taking a dip in what is now essentially a lightly\u2011diluted toilet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inside the plant, the lower floors have been completely flooded after sewage backed up through the 1.8km outfall pipe that normally carries treated wastewater into Cook Strait. With nowhere else to go, the raw discharge is now flowing straight out of a pipe at Tarakena Bay, creating a scene best described as \u201cgross, sad and unacceptable\u201d, according to locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An inquiry will determine how a major metropolitan sewage plant managed to fail so spectacularly. Until then, Wellington\u2019s South Coast remains closed \u2014 unless, of course, you enjoy swimming in metaphors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Story by Sarah McMillan cvnznews.com. Wellingtonians woke today to the fragrant news that roughly 70 million litres of untreated wastewater \u2014 yes, the full aromatic spectrum \u2014 has been gushing into the South Coast every single day since yesterday morning. Mayor Andrew Little, who lives in the neighbourhood and therefore has had the privilege of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[458,399],"coauthors":[380],"class_list":{"0":"post-9737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-andrew-little","9":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9740,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9737\/revisions\/9740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9737"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=9737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}