Sewage shift towards ‘plan B’
A proposal to dump Wellington’s sewage in Cook Strait has been labelled ‘‘environmental vandalism’’ by the man who stopped the discharge decades ago.
City councillor Sean Rush asked councillors to consider opening the ‘‘long outfall’’ pipe from Moa Point and ditching semi-treated wastewater about 2 kilometres off Lyall Bay.
The idea has been opposed by a majority of Wellington City councillors – but not necessarily by mayor Andy Foster, who is still seeking advice.
After finding out that the move would mean the closure of South Coast Wellington beaches, Rush yesterday said using the pipe for semi-treated waste was now increasingly unlikely.
Instead there was a mystery ‘‘plan B’’ being worked out to solve the wastewater problem.
Ever since a pipe beneath Mount Albert failed in January, a procession of trucks has been ferrying Wellington’s sewage sludge by road to the landfill, bringing myriad problems.
Residents are getting annoyed by the trucks, the cost has now climbed to $680,000 per week, and the landfill above O¯ hiro Valley is nearing capacity.
German engineers were coming to New Zealand to fix the pipe but Rush warned there was no guarantee the work would be a success. It was here the ‘‘plan B’’ – details of which he would not reveal – came into play.
Foster said he still wanted to get scientific information before ruling out Rush’s long outfall option. ‘‘We are between a rock and a hard place,’’ he said.
Ray Ahipene-Mercer, who led the charge in the mid-1980s to stop sewage being dumped off Moa Point then later became a city councillor, said using the long outfall to release semi-treated water was only meant to be an emergency measure for hours or for a few days.
That the council was even considering the option ‘‘defies belief’’, he said.
‘‘The consideration of it is an act of environmental vandalism.’’
Greater Wellington Regional Council chairman Daran Ponter said he was ‘‘politically opposed’’ to the idea of dumping the waste in Cook Strait. If it was done the city council would be ‘‘using Covid and the high cost as an excuse’’.
‘‘It is sewage that has had the solids taken out of it – it is still sewage.’’