{"id":461810,"date":"2026-02-06T07:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/461810\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T07:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:35:08","slug":"horror-in-wellington-as-millions-of-litres-of-untreated-sewage-flow-into-the-sea-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/461810\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror in Wellington as millions of litres of untreated sewage flow into the sea | New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sewage leak in New Zealand\u2019s capital Wellington has been described<\/a> by local authorities as an \u201cenvironmental disaster,\u201d with repairs to the city\u2019s wastewater treatment plant expected to take months.<\/p>\n

Residents of Wellington have been advised not to enter the water, collect seafood or even walk their dogs on local beaches.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the lower floors of the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant were completely flooded after heavy rain caused sewage to back up into the 1.8km outfall pipe that normally discharges treated wastewater into Cook Strait, according to<\/a> Wellington Water.<\/p>\n

As a result, untreated sewage began flowing through<\/a> a shorter five-metre outfall pipe into the waters off Wellington\u2019s south coast.<\/p>\n

Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty said<\/a> around 70 million litres of raw wastewater had leaked into surrounding waters, New Zealand\u2019s 1News reported.<\/p>\n

Dougherty said he was \u201cat a loss\u201d to explain why the outfall pipe failed, adding: \u201cThe outfall pipeline has more capacity than the treatment plant itself, it\u2019s designed to be the one thing that works whatever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wellington mayor Andrew Little on Thursday described<\/a> the leak as a \u201ccatastrophic failure,\u201d saying: \u201cThis is a sewage plant processing the sewage for a big city, and it has completely failed, it just completely stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a Facebook update<\/a> on Friday morning, Wellington Water said it had partially restored operation of the long outfall pipe and the screening system, which removes sanitary pads and wet wipes from wastewater.<\/p>\n

The company said it was currently able to pump \u201c900 litres per second of wastewater through the long outfall pipe,\u201d noting: \u201cThis is most of the wastewater during an average day, but during peak flows throughout the day we will need to use the short outfall pipe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDischarging screened wastewater out to sea via the 1.8km long outfall pipe allows for greater dilution of the wastewater in the Cook Strait,\u201d the company said, adding: \u201cThis reduces the amount of untreated wastewater flowing around the coastline \u2013 however the risk to public health still remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

It continued: \u201cWe will continue to work throughout the weekend to increase the volume of flow through the long outfall pipe as much as possible, to reduce the use of the short outfall pipe. The situation is complex, and at this stage we are unable to provide a timeframe of when this may be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local residents, including owners of dive schools operating nearby, have raised concerns about the impact of the spill.<\/p>\n

Dave Drane, owner of Dive Wellington, told<\/a> the Otago Daily Times: \u201cIt\u2019s going to affect us financially in lots of ways. Even the bad advertising from it, where people think: \u2018Well, I\u2019m not going to learn to dive in Wellington,\u2019 but also the bookings that we\u2019ll have to cancel.\u201d He said up to 30 students had already been forced to cancel planned dives in the nearby reserve.<\/p>\n

One local resident, Angus, expressed<\/a> hesitation to surf, telling RNZ: \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go there because it looked like I don\u2019t know\u2026 toilet paper or jellyfish, so I was like I don\u2019t really want to go in on either of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commenting <\/a>on the leak, New Zealand\u2019s department of conservation said it was \u201cextremely concerned,\u201d with its principal marine science adviser Shane Geange saying: \u201cRaw sewage and wastewater entering a marine environment poses an immediate and severe threat to a wide range of ecological functions and species, but I think the primary concern is around the public health concern which Greater Wellington health authorities are actively managing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geange added that the department was working with local authorities to determine how far the sewage has spread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sewage leak in New Zealand\u2019s capital Wellington has been described by local authorities as an \u201cenvironmental disaster,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-461810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}