It turns out the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant is only half built. There's another half that was supposed to be built and never was. If it had been built, that spill probably wouldn't have happened because there would have been enough capacity at the treatment plant to cope with the extra rainwater that fell that evening.
Now, we don't know why the second phase was never built. Maybe someone, somewhere along the line in the past 30 years, decided to save some money and shelved it. Or maybe it just got lost on the list of things the council was supposed to do. Maybe, as people left their jobs over the years, someone packed up their desk and forgot to tell the next person, "Oi, can you remember to build the rest of the Moa Point plant?" And so it never got built.
That's a question that perhaps could have been answered by the Chief Infrastructure Officer at Wellington City Council, or maybe the previous Chief Infrastructure Officer, or perhaps their specialist advisers. But none of them made themselves available to be interviewed for this report.
Now, that's suspicious, isn't it? That's the kind of thing you do if you don't want to say something that might be used against you, isn't it?
But here we are once again, with a council dropping the ball on one of its core jobs, in this case treating poo, and then nobody being held accountable. Instead, it's being blamed on systemic issues.
Doesn't that sound exactly like what happened with Tauranga City Council and its failure to act on repeated warnings about the looming landslide that went on to kill people?
Once again, Minister Simon Watts is doing nothing about it. He's simply going to close the book on a sorry chapter and promise that the council is already working on doing better.
Now, I'm getting very tired, and I suspect many of you are too, of councils being really rubbish at their jobs, stuffing up in quite significant ways and then nobody ever getting in trouble for it.
Someone made the decision not to build the second part of the plant, just as someone made the decision not to bother setting up a warning system for a landslide in Tauranga.
I'd like to know who that was, and I'd like them to be made an example of so that other council staffers get a bit of a fright and do their jobs better in the future.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
Hda, or maybe with the focus being wellington you will understand that they have a very left to far left leaning toward their council, always pretty much have...and probably always pretty much will.
It seems wellingtonians would prefer rainbow crossings, and gender neutral public toilets along with their $300m ratepayers cycle ways, than good reliable infrastructure. Who are we to tell them? Wellington have got what they wanted and deserve.
Unfortunately for wellington, Tory didn't get back in to mayor again, wellington voted for someone slightly less far left, mr little, from labour, so you can probably expect an improvement in their fortunes for a while. It's all about competence folks. (Shhhh, just don't tell wellington people that, they haven't figured it out yet. )
Yes Heather, anyone who is self employed or works in the private sector is all to familiar with the concept of consequences for poor performance and even more so for complete mismanagement.
It is just such a disregard for taxpayer and rate payer values as well as money that this is allowed to continue.
Try getting accountability following Gabrielle and pointing out mistakes made.
All you get is silence and a bigger rates bill.
Post a Comment
Thank you for joining the discussion. Breaking Views welcomes respectful contributions that enrich the debate. Please ensure your comments are not defamatory, derogatory or disruptive. We appreciate your cooperation.