A plumbing industry body is calling for independent commissioners to look into Wellington City Council amid a tsunami of leaks in the capital.
The Wellington region is in level 2 water restrictions, meaning a ban on household garden sprinklers and irrigation systems, with a possible move to level 3 restrictions.
But at the same time, Wellington Water said the region had thousands of water leaks and estimated 45 per cent of the region's water was being lost, prompting some residents to reroute the leaks to water their garden.
Master Plumbers chief executive Greg Wallace told Checkpoint Wellingtonians were fed up. …
Wallace said the council needed to stop doing band-aid patch jobs and move forward with a real replacement strategy. In the meantime, he said the isolation valves and tobies (a water shut-off valve) in all houses needed to be fixed.
“We need to stop bandaging the problem. What we're doing is we're digging up the road, fixing one leak, and 200m down the road that pipe that needed repair 40 years ago is going to leak again.
“We're advocating for independent commissioners to go into the council … this problem has been around for decades. We're still investing into cycleways, a new Town Hall and libraries, when we potentially could run out of water,” he said.
“It's nothing else than financial mismanagement from this council.”
This is what the Council has chosen to spend money on, instead:
- Town Hall music venue $340 million
- Rebuild central library rather than use existing ones – $189 million
- A $13 million carpark building
- Cycleways $226 million
- Convention Centre $169 million
- $32 million corporate welfare for Reading Cinemas
- $139 million on the Golden Mile (removing cars)
- $236 million on food recycling
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
2 comments:
Good stuff David.
Your findings will apply to all councils around the country.
Money gets spent on non core business at the expense of important stuff.
No problem, lets borrow the money and let the ratepayer pick up the tab.
As regards Wellington, all that money would go a long way to fixing their water infrastructure woes.
I think the plumbing rep was seeking aggrandizement. Much of the street system is far removed from household plumbing. And the cutting of service to many, health precautions etc all novel. A report on the cause of all the leaks would be of interets. But impossible to gather data without prejudice. Utility contrctors do not snitch on each other, report prvious poor work by themselves or others etc.
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