{"id":266092,"date":"2026-02-03T21:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266092\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:11:12","slug":"mechanical-failure-sees-wellington-water-discharge-untreated-sewage-at-moa-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266092\/","title":{"rendered":"Mechanical failure sees Wellington Water discharge untreated sewage at Moa Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Moa<\/p>\n

\nWellington Water’s Moa Point treatment plant (file photo).
\nPhoto: Wellington Water\n<\/p>\n

Wellington Water has started discharging raw sewage off the city’s south coast, and issued two other wastewater discharge notices, after a mechanical failure and heavy rain.<\/p>\n

The mechanical failure, at 3am on Wednesday, caused it to start an unconsented discharge of untreated wastewater from its Moa Point treatment plant.<\/p>\n

The water agency<\/a> said the sewage would emerge at the short outfall into the ocean at Tarakena Bay and may cause the water to appear cloudy or murky.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, during a night of heavy rain, partially treated wastewater was discharged into Wellington’s Karori Stream at 10.45pm on Tuesday. That would also flow into the sea on the south coast.<\/p>\n

About half an hour before that, fully treated sewage was released at 10.18pm into Waiwhet\u016b Stream in Lower Hutt, which flows into the sea near Petone beach.<\/p>\n

Water monitoring body Land, Air, Water Aotearoa advises people to stay out of the sea for two or three days after heavy rain.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wellington Water’s Moa Point treatment plant (file photo). Photo: Wellington Water Wellington Water has started discharging raw sewage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-266092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266092","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=266092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}