Source: Radio New Zealand
The head of Wellington Water says about 70 million litres of raw sewage is now flowing into the sea each day.
Untreated water is leaking onto the capital’s south coast beaches due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding and being turned off from early this morning.
The water company said it could take months to fully repair the sewage infrastructure.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Department of Conservation said given the location of the sewage spill, mussels, kina, pāua, sponges, fish, and penguins could be at risk.
How long the discharge continues, the volume of effluent, and ocean current, swell and wind would determine if other species would also be at risk.
And there may be environmental impacts like algal blooms and deoxygenated water as a result of the spill, as well as bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
It said it doesn’t intend to visit the site at this time because of the risk to human health.
Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty told Checkpoint the critical question will be why the Moa Point’s outfall pipe backed up this morning.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
“We need to get a camera down there to understand why that didn’t perform.”
Dougherty said Wellington Water was alerted to the issue two hours later than it should have.
“That’s one of the things I will be asking about but at the moment I don’t want that team distracted from things getting fixed.”
He guessed it would be two months before the plant was fully operational.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Dougherty confirmed an average of around 70 million litres of raw sewage was now flowing into Wellington’s South Coast.
At 4:42pm on Wednesday, RNZ saw just over a dozen people out at the South Coast.
No one was in the water other than a dog or two and there was no smell or obvious change in water colour.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
