Story by Sarah McMillan cvnznews.com.
Wellingtonians woke today to the fragrant news that roughly 70 million litres of untreated wastewater — yes, the full aromatic spectrum — 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 inhaling this civic masterpiece firsthand, has called for an independent inquiry into what he describes as a “catastrophic failure” and an “environmental disaster”.
“This is a sewage plant processing the sewage for a big city, and it has completely failed,” Little said, in what may be the understatement of the decade. “It just completely stopped.”
Apparently, the volumes flowing through the Moa Point plant were within safe limits. The system simply decided it had had enough — a blockage or “some other factor”, as officials delicately put it, brought the whole operation to a halt. Wellington’s infrastructure, it seems, has once again chosen chaos.
Residents are furious, and Little says he shares their frustration. “This is my neighbourhood… where I walk my dog, where I kayak and swim,” he said, proving that even mayors are not immune to the consequences of a city’s pipes giving up on life.
Authorities are scrambling to warn the public that the coastline is now a no‑go zone for swimming, dog‑walking, or collecting seafood — 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‑diluted toilet.
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 “gross, sad and unacceptable”, according to locals.
An inquiry will determine how a major metropolitan sewage plant managed to fail so spectacularly. Until then, Wellington’s South Coast remains closed — unless, of course, you enjoy swimming in metaphors.
