As city leaks, Wellington Water boosts spin army
As Wellingtonians worry about taps running dry, the entity charged with keeping water flowing has doubled down on communications staff – now costing the same as fixing nearly 200 leaks.
Details released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings
Act show the eight people employed in Wellington Water’s team cost ratepayers $889,000 this financial year. That number is up from three people, with combined salaries of $353,000, three years ago.
Once contractors and outside public relations costs are included, the annual bill has gone from $552,000 to $921,000.
The current year’s bill is almost equal to the extra $1 million the water utility got the Wellington City Council to grant it over summer to help it get on top of a leak backlog. It was then granted a further $1m but, by April 10, had only fixed 148 of the 880 leaks it said it would, while the per-leak repair cost jumped from $1500 in 2021 to $4641 in 2024.
The current year’s communications team costs would have been enough to fix 198 leaks.
Wellington Water expects to this week downgrade its water restrictions, meaning gardens can be watered every second day, after a dry summer mixed with a large amount of leaks to put the region, outside of Kāpiti, in danger of having water outages and a regional state of emergency being declared.
Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell said the need for better communications was asked for by “shareholders and stakeholders”.
Councils, which owned Wellington Water, had not specifically asked for more communications staff, she confirmed.
The communications team also helped keep residents informed via social media, she said.
Wellington’s Water staffing numbers had grown from 240 to 386 in three years, not including staff in the Fulton Hogan alliance with the utility, and most were on front line work such as fixing leaks, she said.
In 2022, Wellington Water revealed a fluoride failure which meant water was unfluoridated for almost a year and had been patchy dating all the way back to 2016.
An independent inquiry into the failure found the issue was treated with a lack of urgency by Wellington Water and there was a culture of “learned helplessness” within the organisation.
The inquiry found the company’s culture hindered communication about fluoride, after it turned off the fluoride at two plants without telling councils or the public.
Haskell said the communications spending boost was partly due to the fluoride inquiry findings.
Wellington Water on May 8 had 2319 confirmed leaks across the region, which was 96 fewer than a week earlier.
Haskell said the number now was better.
City councillor Ben McNulty said he was not concerned about the communications headcount “as long as they’re delivering results”. He wanted data from Wellington Water showing the effectiveness of the communications team.
Councillor Tim Brown described it as a case of Wellington Water’s “startling hypocrisy and miss allocation of our ratepayers’ money”.
When Wellington Water asked for more money from the city council in April, councillors were told the water utility would have to hire a new person if the council wanted reporting back on how the money was spent.
Councillor Ray Chung, the only other councillor to respond before deadline, said the figures were “very disturbing” while there were leaks around the city.