Dozens more were marked red, meaning poor water quality.<\/p>\n
Chris was relieved they hadn\u2019t been swimming.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] just wanted to enjoy the sun at the beach on our day off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea. I think I\u2019m not going to swim right now, actually. I think we\u2019re going to have to maybe drive further down to be able to swim in the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lauren said she preferred to keep her distance from faeces, but she had seen a lot worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have very sensitive skin, especially with like folliculitis and like skin irritations, so water quality is important to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did yoga training in Bali and there was literal trash and like faecal matter in the water and I wouldn\u2019t want to do that again. Wouldn\u2019t recommend it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sewage overflow warning sign alerts beachgoers at Auckland’s Herne Bay Beach. Photo \/ RNZ, Felix Walton<\/p>\n
Thunderstorms over the weekend had filled Auckland\u2019s wastewater infrastructure to the brim and spilled out into the harbour.<\/p>\n
Victoria University freshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy told Midday Report the warming climate would cause more frequent spills over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got climate change, which means warmer temperatures, which means more growth of, you know, dangerous bacteria, but also more extremes in weather,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we get these flooding events and high rainfall events.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the ageing wastewater infrastructure across New Zealand couldn\u2019t handle the volume.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuge amounts of water that shouldn\u2019t be in a sewage system that gets in through, you know, old broken infrastructure plus illegal connections, meaning massive flows, you know, additional flows coming into wastewater treatment plants and they just can\u2019t handle it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t have storage. They open the gates and let it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Sentinel Beach in Herne Bay, beachgoer Michael wished he could just go for a swim without ending up waist deep in waste.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I think that\u2019s pretty bad… It would be nice to be able to like come down here, have a swim and know it\u2019s safe without checking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Auckland Council\u2019s SafeSwim technical lead Dr Martin Neale said swimmers risked catching a nasty bacterial infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe source of the contamination is pathogens in the water. So, that\u2019s the risk you\u2019re exposing yourself to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally, those will manifest as either respiratory or tummy upsets. But sometimes if you have a cut or something like that, it can infect the cut.\u201d<\/p>\n
He warned of similar interruptions throughout the rest of summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring summer is when we get these sort of intense thunderstorm situations like we had yesterday, there was thunderstorm warnings out and we\u2019ll see them in summer,\u201d Neale said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know how many, but when those things do happen, we would encourage people to check out SafeSwim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neale expected the contaminated waters to clear over the following two days.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Watercare noted that it was already investing in upgrading wastewater infrastructure to reduce spills.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are investing $8 billion in new and upgraded wastewater infrastructure in the next decade, which includes $4.8b specifically in wastewater networks to reduce overflows,\u201d head of wastewater Jon Piggot said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Herne Bay and St Marys Bay, the real results will come around 2028 when we finish the Herne Bay Collector tunnel.\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens more were marked red, meaning poor water quality. Chris was relieved they hadn\u2019t been swimming. \u201c[We] just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,7974,37774,111,43,139,69,3111,106774,106775,42308,2069,87540,61,37775,8218],"class_list":{"0":"post-162500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-auckland","9":"tag-beaches","10":"tag-felix","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-out","16":"tag-overflows","17":"tag-safeswim","18":"tag-sewage","19":"tag-stay","20":"tag-swimmers","21":"tag-to","22":"tag-walton","23":"tag-warns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}