Kerre Woodham: Are you willing to see a rise in rates to clean up our waterways?

I've been saying every morning to Helen, God, would you look at what's happening in Wellington? Look at what has oh! Like one of those people, usually men, watching the television going, look what she's wearing, come here and have a look at this. Have a look at that. God. Oh, but I'm like that about the waste going into the ocean off Wellington. That's far more important than what a reporter may or may not be wearing.

It is hard to comprehend the sheer amount of waste being pumped into Wellington's ocean right now. Who knew humans could produce so much? What does 70 million litres of waste per day look like? Helpfully, the Spinoff broke it down. Moa Point, the writer writes, is sharting out 28 Olympic pools of pure uncut human waste every 24 hours and will be doing so for months.

If you want to have an Auckland analogy, the total tank capacity at Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium is 18 million litres. Moa Point is divesting itself of nearly four Kelly Tarltons worth of poos, wees, toilet paper every single day. Cool. You get the picture. Thank you Spinoff.

It's an absolute disgrace. And yet really, Auckland can't talk. Every time it rains our beaches are closed. You know, where you hear the sound of rain on the roof, you used to think, oh, how lovely and relaxing. Now I think landslips and I think beach closures. Every year the joy of summer's blighted by beach closures.

I mean, we do have help on the way. Helen and I have walked the poo tunnel and that was amazing to see and that's going to be open at the end of the year. But even then they said they're not going to be able to prevent all beach closures. They're not going to be able to say hand on heart it will never happen again because nature does what nature does and if there's an absolute torrent and a deluge they won't be able to cope even with that enormous pipe, but it will certainly mitigate a lot of the damage done.

So there has been chronic underinvestment in our infrastructure around the country for decades, but nowhere is it more exemplified than Wellington. On the 27 th of May 2021 remember those times, Wellington City Council's long term plan committee faced a fork in the road.

Officers presented councillors with water investment options, including one, water option three, that contained a $391 million wastewater renewals programme. It was designed to reduce sewage pollution, starting with the central city and South Coast catchments that are now making headlines. At the same meeting, officers recommended cycleways option three, a staged programme set out in the consultation document presented to councillors.

This is from Peter Bassett in the blog Breaking Views. And as he writes, what happened next is the hinge moment of Wellington's current disgrace. An amendment was moved by then councillor, now MP, Tamatha Paul, seconded by Jill Day, now Labour Party president, to adopt cycleways option four, expanding the programme to 226 million over 10 years compared with 120 million under option three. That amendment passed. Accelerated wastewater renewal did not. Simon Woolf was one of the councillors who voted against cycleways over water.

There's been no cognisance of reprioritising. It's just gone down an ideological line. The city's going to suffer for years and years on the back of this underinvestment.

Which is putting it mildly. He's ropable. He and the other councillors who voted against it. They could see what was happening. They knew it was imperative and it wasn't one or the other, it was a matter of priority.

You could say sure, let's do cycleways, but shall we sort out the wastewater first because that is that's verging on catastrophic. No. No, let's go with the cycleways and what's more, let's spend more money on the cycleways than was recommended and let's not do the wastewater. It'll be fine. Just hold on. It's not fine. It couldn't hold on.

To be fair, the previous Labour government understood that the country's infrastructure for the most part is in crisis, hence Three Waters. But yet again they were let down by their own execution of a plan to revitalise New Zealand's waterways. They failed to get the public behind Three Waters.

National has come up with its own plan. Three Waters has become Affordable Water Done Well and there seems to be a growing understanding that we just can't kick the can down the road. All councils around the country are going to have to bite the bullet. Some have done, only a few, some have done so.

Are you willing to see a rise in rates to clean up our waterways? Do you understand the urgency? Does Wellington's infrastructure crisis underline the urgency and the need to undertake the water reforms? And if we have to pay more in our rates, so be it.

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