News and media

The independent review into an error in Wellington Water’s budgeting advice for councils’ 2024-34 Long-Term Plans has today been released and Wellington Water Board Chair, Nick Leggett says it doesn’t pull any punches.

Checks of all our systems have been undertaken with no major impacts and services to customers are unaffected.

Wellingtonians are about to see Whakawhirinaki: The Silverstream Water Bridge and Shared Path take its full form as a resilient new asset, carrying bulk water supplies across Te Awa Kairangi/Hutt River.

The central arch of the steel bridge is set to be lifted into place across the river later this week (12 July weather permitting) downstream from the existing road and rail bridges connecting State Highway 2 to Fergusson Drive. The third and final bridge section will be lifted into place the following day.

Wellington Water has apologised to shareholding councils for an error made in the advice provided to councils for their draft 2024-34 Long-Term Plans (LTP).

The combined effort of the residents of Wellington City, Porirua, Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt saved over a staggering 175 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water over summer, preventing tighter water restrictions across the region.

Thanks to Wellingtonian’s continued work to conserve water, the Wellington Metropolitan Region can begin to move down water restriction levels.

Thanks to South Wairarapa residents keeping an eye on their water use, the region can shift down to Level 1 water restrictions on Wednesday May 1st. The shift follows the Ruamahanga River returning to acceptable levels and cooler temperatures contributing to a reduction in demand.

Lower river levels over the past weekend, which forced the temporary shutdown of the Wainuiomata water treatment plant, have been a timely reminder for the need for level 2 Water restrictions, even though summer has ended.

In May 2023, Wellington City Council (WCC) decided to invest an additional $2.3m into fixing more leaks in the WCC drinking water network with the condition to undertake a review of Wellington Water Limited’s frontline operations.

Wellington Water has been provided with both a final version of an Executive Summary and a redacted final version, but not the full document, of the detailed Contract Optimisation Review (the “report”) conducted by reviewer FieldForce4 at the request of WCC. Wellington Water does not accept the report and is unable to approve or sign off on the report’s recommendations.

Wellingtonians' continued efforts to conserve water and cooler weather ahead mean an escalation to Level 3 water restrictions has significantly reduced.

“Thanks Wellington – thanks to you we’ve made it through a tricky summer and avoided tighter water restrictions together,” says Charles Barker, Director of Regulatory Services.

“Today we have run the numbers again and what this shows is that the hard mahi of the community has really paid off with the likelihood of moving to Level 3 dropping down to 16 per cent."