{"id":283542,"date":"2026-02-14T08:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T08:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283542\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T08:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T08:22:09","slug":"concerns-weather-could-push-raw-sewage-towards-wellingtons-shoreline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283542\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerns weather could push raw sewage towards Wellington’s shoreline"},"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.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n

Wellington Water is concerned that the weather could increase the likelihood of raw sewage being pushed towards the shoreline.<\/a><\/p>\n

Progress is being made at the Moa Point Wastewater Treatment Plant to clean it, mitigate the odour, and inspect the damage.<\/p>\n

Nearly 80 percent of the equipment inside the plant was damaged in a meltdown on 4 February.<\/p>\n

Megalitres of raw sewage have spilled into the Cook Strait since, but not through the short outfall pipe since the following day.<\/p>\n

However, Wellington Water is warning that wastewater will have to be discharged through that pipe if there is increased flow into the plant.<\/p>\n

MetService has placed heavy swell warnings, strong orange wind warnings and a heavy rain watch on some parts of Wellington for Sunday and Monday.<\/p>\n

Wellington Water previously said the removal of sewage from the plant and cleaning its rooms were ongoing.<\/p>\n

It was also working on understanding the state of the plant’s equipment and operations.<\/p>\n

“This assessment will take some time, and we still expect there will be an extended outage at the plant.”<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> 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-283542","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\/283542","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=283542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283542\/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=283542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}