Source: Radio New Zealand
Wellington Water staff are now able to enter the failed Moa Point treatment plant. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Wellington Water staff are now able to enter the failed Moa Point treatment plant but they cannot provide details of the work being done or who is involved.
Nearly 80 percent of the equipment inside the plant was damaged when it was flooded by a backflow of raw sewage last week.
At the peak of the equipment failure, 3300 litres of untreated wastewater went into the sea every second.
Since then a stretch of the Capital’s south coast had been off limits for swimming and gathering sea food.
Wellington Water expected it could be months before the plant was returned to full operations.
It said cleaning work was continuing, with fresh water flushed through the biological treatment areas of the plant to reduce levels of hydrogen sulphide, which made the interior of the plant hazardous to enter.
On Wednesday the water entity said it had “begun a closely managed entry” to the plant.
But it could not confirm specifics regarding who was now able to access the site, the conditions inside, what was being done to ensure the people’s safety or what was being revealed now that access had been acheived.
Earlier this week, Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dogherty said, initially, a room at the bottom of plant, the size of an Olympic Swimming Pool, was 3 metres deep in wastewater.
RNZ’s requests for information regarding the access to the site were put to Wellington Water at the beginning of the week in response to interviews with Dogherty where he said Monday would be the first day staff could safely go into the building to assess the damage.
On Wednesday, a statement from Dogherty said Wellington Water would be stepping back from making public statements about “aspects of the Moa Point incident and response” following an announcement from Wellington Mayor Andrew Little that the government would look to establish an independent inquiry into the plant’s failure as soon as possible.
“Now the inquiry has been signalled, it is important we allow that process to run its course. This means that we are unable to provide any further public statements regarding aspects of the Moa Point incident and response that may be included in the inquiry,” Dogherty said.
At the begining of the week, Little said Wellington City Council and central government would work together to ensure an inquiry was independent and had the right powers to make sure a similar problem never happened again.
Little said a ministerial inquiry would meet his preferred criteria of having independence, the right expertise and the power to access information.
“A ministerial inquiry has all that. It is more formalistic and does take a longer period of time to get the appointments up, get the terms of reference sorted out and then get it going. For me it is about having those criteria met but doing something that is as quick as possible. Those are the things that we are talking through,” Little said.
A spokesperson for Wellington Water said it hoped to provide more details of the work being done in the plant on Thursday.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
