{"id":266798,"date":"2026-02-04T07:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T07:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266798\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T07:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T07:24:13","slug":"70-million-litres-of-raw-sewage-flowing-into-wellington-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266798\/","title":{"rendered":"70 million litres of raw sewage flowing into Wellington sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The head of Wellington Water says about 70 million litres of raw sewage is now flowing into the sea each day.<\/p>\n<p>Untreated water is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/585854\/wellington-s-moa-point-wastewater-plant-floods-shuts-down-fix-could-take-months\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">leaking onto the capital&#8217;s south coast beaches<\/a> due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding and being turned off from early this morning.<\/p>\n<p>The water company said it could take months to fully repair the sewage infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JTQ53B_Image_5_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"Untreated water is leaking onto the capital's south coast beaches due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding and being turned off from early this morning.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\n<p>Photo: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n<p>The Department of Conservation said given the location of the sewage spill, mussels, kina, p\u0101ua, sponges, fish, and penguins could be at risk.<\/p>\n<p>How long the discharge continues, the volume of effluent, and ocean current, swell and wind would determine if other species would also be at risk.<\/p>\n<p>And there may be environmental impacts like algal blooms and deoxygenated water as a result of the spill, as well as bacteria, viruses, and parasites.<\/p>\n<p>It said it doesn&#8217;t intend to visit the site at this time because of the risk to human health.<\/p>\n<p>Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty told Checkpoint the critical question will be why the Moa Point&#8217;s outfall pipe backed up this morning.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JTQ53B_Image_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"Untreated water is leaking onto the capital's south coast beaches due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding and being turned off from early this morning.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\n<p>Photo: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to get a camera down there to understand why that didn&#8217;t perform.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dougherty said Wellington Water was alerted to the issue two hours later than it should have.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s one of the things I will be asking about but at the moment I don&#8217;t want that team distracted from things getting fixed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He guessed it would be two months before the plant was fully operational.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JTQ53B_Image_4_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"684\" alt=\"Untreated water is leaking onto the capital's south coast beaches due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding and being turned off from early this morning.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\n<p>Photo: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n<p>Dougherty confirmed an average of around 70 million litres of raw sewage was now flowing into Wellington&#8217;s South Coast.<\/p>\n<p>At 4:42pm on Wednesday, RNZ saw just over a dozen people out at the South Coast.<\/p>\n<p>No one was in the water other than a dog or two and there was no smell or obvious change in water colour.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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":"The head of Wellington Water says about 70 million litres of raw sewage is now flowing into the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266799,"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-266798","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\/266798","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=266798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}