Wastewater leak in archives building

The building housing New Zealand’s taonga is draughty, dripping wastewater, has asbestos issues and needs to be monitored round-the-clock.

Among the troves at Archives NZ is the black box from the Erebus disaster, original art for the School Journals ,a national collection of war art, the National Film Unit collection and Defence Force personnel records.

But Cabinet papers, released yesterday, show what a sorry state the Mulgrave St building is in, as a replacement is planned for across the road.

‘‘The Archives’ Mulgrave St Wellington

facility is of particular concern, with mechanical plant breakdowns, water and wastewater leaks, asbestos, lack of insulation and airtightness, and periodic plantroom failures, impacting the ability to appropriately preserve, care and protect our documentary heritage and taonga,’’ the documents point out.

Archives NZ said the collections were monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week with staff able to respond quickly to leaks and dust and ‘‘protect and salvage any records at risk’’.

The new building would be purposebuilt, there would be no water pipes over collections, and it would be sealed.

The Mulgrave St building is the largest of Archives NZ’s four archives and hold records for the entire country.

The Government announced last year it would put $25 million towards the design phase of a new building for Archives NZ, one adjoining the National Library building.

When Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin came into office in 2017, she was greeted with a warning that Archives NZ would run out of storage space in 2020, and the National Library by 2030.

Martin had seen ‘‘drips from ceilings into buckets’’ in the current archives building.

The Treaty of Waitangi, the women’s suffrage petition, and He Whakaputanga, the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes, had since been moved to a dedicated exhibition within the National Library.