{"id":271880,"date":"2026-02-07T05:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271880\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T05:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:45:12","slug":"removing-sewage-before-it-goes-septic-is-main-focus-of-wellington-water-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271880\/","title":{"rendered":"Removing sewage before it goes septic is main focus of Wellington water company"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Untreated<\/p>\n

\nUntreated water was leaking onto the capital’s south coast beaches due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding and being turned off from early this morning.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n

Wellington Water is working against the clock to get raw sewage out of its Moa Point Treatment Plant before it goes septic.<\/p>\n

Early Wednesday morning the plant was flooded by raw sewage – causing it to shut down and be evacuated.<\/p>\n

Some of that waste had been taken to landfill – while the rest of it was now being pumped out of the facility.<\/p>\n

The water company’s board chair Nick Leggett said they’re working hard to get the material out of the plant prior to it becoming septic.<\/p>\n

“That has been a focus from pretty much the moment that we knew there was something wrong.<\/p>\n

“It was getting this place clean so it is a safe place to work and so it is not emitting obviously a stench.”<\/p>\n

\"Sewage<\/p>\n

\nSewage can be seen on Wellington’s South Coast after a leak from the Moa Point wastewater plant.
\nPhoto: Kate Taptiklis\n<\/p>\n

That sewage was being pumped from the plant’s 1.8 kilometre long outfall pipe to reduce harm to beaches.<\/p>\n

Wellington Water believed some issue with that pipe had caused the major failure of the plant.<\/p>\n

Leggett said divers had been inspecting it but were yet to find any form of blockage.<\/p>\n

On Friday it was reported Wellington Mayor Andrew Little would be raising the Moa Point treatment plant failure<\/a> with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Monday.<\/p>\n

The meeting was scheduled already but Little said it would be a topic of discussion.<\/p>\n

Little said one of the questions in the days ahead would be about setting up an appropriate investigation or inquiry into what happened.<\/p>\n

“We can’t let this happen again,” he said. “We can’t let such a critical plant for a modern city fail in the way that this has and cause the environmental degradation that it has.<\/p>\n

“It’s important we get the facts and it’s important we understand what we need to do to prevent it from happening again.”<\/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":"Untreated water was leaking onto the capital’s south coast beaches due to the Moa Point Treatment Plant flooding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271881,"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-271880","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\/271880","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=271880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}