Taranaki Street Rising Main
On behalf of Wellington City Council, we are building a major new wastewater rising main under Taranaki Street as part of our programme of work increasing the capacity and resilience of the city's wastewater network.
If you have any questions about this work, please contact:
Wellington Water, 04 912 4400
Latest Updates
Using the latest in trenchless tech, the team at G.P. Friel who are delivering Wellington’s new Taranaki Street wastewater rising main has hit a big milestone.
It’s a case of building for the future while preserving the past down at the new Taranaki Street rising main construction site right now.
Making great progress
Work commences Monday 21 August 2023 and is expected to take around 21 months to complete.
The work involves road and lane closures at different locations up Taranaki Street as the project progresses. Traffic management will be in place and we will be asking people who drive to consider other modes of transport, to take other routes where possible and travel outside peak times.
On-street parking in the area alongside the worksite will also be restricted to accommodate temporary traffic management.
However, thanks to innovative new trenchless equipment that G.P. Friel Ltd has imported for this project excavation will be kept to a minimum, reducing disruption and the need to remove waste from the site.
Hours of work will generally be 7:00am – 6:00pm Monday to Saturday. For specific aspects of the project, we may need to undertake some work during both days of the weekend or out of hours.
Why are we doing this?
This project is Stage 1 of a major programme of work called the CBD Wastewater Renewals and Upgrades, designed to ensure future resilience, support population growth and protect the environment.
The new Taranaki Street rising main - that's a pipe that carries wastewater under pressure - will allow wastewater to be diverted to the main interceptor, which carries wastewater to the Moa Point treatment plant. This will connect to the lower rising main system to provide continued service while the other rising mains are replaced in the future.
The project will also provide additional ‘redundancy’ in the system ensuring that if a problem arises such as a pipe burst or an upgrade is needed, there is capacity to pick up the load and store it or pump it via an alternative route to the interceptor
Check out other projects as part of this programme of work.
All Updates
Thanks to the ‘Guided Auger Bore’ (GABBY), tech they’ve completed two ‘drives’ allowing them to install around 150m of new pipe 3m underground – including a section under Vivian Street SH1– without interrupting traffic!
Trenchless technologies like this reduce the amount of contaminated waste taken to landfill, reinstatement required and traffic disruption.
The team has another 4 drives planned on the project.
We are excited to see what new opportunities G.P. Friel can find to add value to future works with this technology.
An array of historic artefacts from 1880s Wellington, such as shoes, broken plates and bottles have been unearthed as our partner G.P. Friel Ltd’s crews deep trench through layers of reclaimed land into the former seabed.
Ginger beer bottle - GD stands for George Dixon, a Wellington aerated water manufacturer - date of manufacture c.1880, and deposited during or before reclamation in 1886
Working with archaeologist Andy Dodd on site, items are being recovered and documented, and will eventually be returned to the landowner Wellington City Council. Andy will also write a report about the findings.
Also unearthed nrth of the Wakefield Street intersection are structural remains linked to the Te Aro railway, which was built on the newly reclaimed land and opened in 1893.
Now as the worksite progresses from Wakefield Street further towards Courtenay Place, remains associated with an 1870s slipway have also been exposed three meters below the present ground level.
“It’s a very narrow trench, but we’ve so far encountered evidence from a number of structures associated with the industrial development of the Te Aro waterfront,” says Andy.
“The excavation presents an opportunity to recover information that can supplement archival evidence, and potentially fill gaps in what we know about the changes of use in this area over time.
“The artefacts from below the reclamation fill all have terminal date of 1886, so knowing more about when certain items were in circulation helps us date deposits from other excavations.”
As the site moves further towards Courtenay Place, there is a chance of unearthing structures from Te Aro Pa, the original settlement in Wellington established in the 1820s and occupied until the 1870s.
The discovery protocol is however slowing planned progress on the project and it is going to take us longer to complete this activity.
As always, we appreciate the continued patience of business owners, residents, and the travelling public as we install this critical new wastewater infrastructure on behalf of Wellington City Council.
We’ve had a great couple of weeks working around the Wakefield St intersection.
We have now installed a steel casing across the intersection by pipe ramming and cleaned out the casing ready to have this new major wastewater pipeline slipped through it.
Trenchless installations like this mean that we don’t have to dig up the busy traffic lanes of the intersection and create unnecessary disruption. They reduce the amount of waste that the project has to transport to landfill and result in a product that has a lower carbon footprint.
What's next
Over the next couple of weeks we will be constructing connection pipework and chambers in the current excavations and starting to backfill them back up to road level. On the northern side of the intersection we will be working to connect up the pipe to the previously laid section in Wakefield St East before we start crossing Taranaki St into Market Lane. On the southern side of the intersection we will be backfilling the existing excavation before starting to excavate and lay pipes towards Courtenay Place.
There is a lot of work to do and we will provide another update before we start moving the site around.
As ever, please take extra time for your journeys around the traffic management avoid the area if you can and follow the instructions of our onsite traffic management team.
Our project is planned to be complete in mid-2025.