A damaged bridge near Houghton Valley Play Centre, Wellington, where a burst water main sent a torrent of mud and trees into the valley below. Photo: Supplied / Richard Cooke
A Wellington man says residents' reports of a small river of water from a leaking main went unheeded for two weeks before it burst sending a torrent of mud and trees onto a pathway below.
Two hundred homes in Houghton Bay were left without water when the main ruptured on Tuesday afternoon.
Richard Cooke said someone could have been killed if they had been on a pathway to a nearby playcentre when the main finally gave way.
"I heard a massive crash; it sounded like, well, the hillside and trees coming down. It'd blown out the side of the retaining wall underneath where the leak was starting from.
"I looked up and there's a couple of teenaged girls. It looked like they'd been walking down the pavement when it blew underneath them. It must've scared the hell out of them," Cooke said.
Cooke said the main had been sending "a small river" into the valley for nearly a month before it burst.
"It was a decent sized creek, enough to cause a waterfall coming down the hill and wash out a track that we were walking across. We're talking about 20 to 50 litres a second coming down the hill."
His neighbour had reported the original fault about two weeks before the main blew and Cooke contacted the council on Monday when the pressure began to lift the pavement above the leak.
Contractors had just arrived at the scene when the main suddenly ruptured.
"If anyone was walking across that bridge they would've been hit by, I don't know, how many tonnes of mud, water and trees that'd been uprooted and washed down the hill. That's what really pissed me off. It was so avoidable and it ended up being dangerous as hell," Cooke said.
He could not believe the leaking main was allowed to escalate into a dangerous situation in the middle of a water shortage, he said.
Dog walker also alerts council
Claudia Schötz walks her dog along the pathways that run beneath the water main.
She said she was aware of the leak a week before she reported it to council on 10 January.
Five days later the amount of runoff had grown and she called in again, this time supplying GPS co-ordinates in case council staff had been unable to find the location below the road.
"It had widened over a much wider area coming down the hill in several five to ten metre widths. People with children use that path to get to the playcentre so that was a concern," Schötz said.
She said work on a mains pressure relief valve was completed in the area just before Christmas and she suspected the pipe started leaking almost immediately after that.
"I just struggle that fresh water supply and leaks are not a main priority. The whole infrastructure needs to be prioritised rather than working on other projects that are less urgent because without water we are in real strife," she said.
Wellington is currently at level two water restrictions with residents being advised to conserve water and refrain from using unattended irrigation or sprinklers.
Locals say leak 'really frustrating'
Houghton Bay resident Sarah Fussell was horrified to see how much water had been lost as a result of the leak in her neighbourhood.
She said locals reported the leak to Wellington City Council multiple times, but it was assigned as a low-priority job.
"It took the main blowing for there to be an adequate response. I know that it's no one person or no one thing responsible but it's deeply frustrating. I would rather have functioning pipes than a rebuilt town hall".
Fussell said it was disappointing a repair did not come sooner, particularly with water restrictions in place for summer.
"They say we're losing all this water because of ageing infrastructure. That's not ageing, that's a month old. Just the quality of work is really frustrating. But yeah, the whole neighbourhood is actively trying to save water".
Emma Robertson walks her dog through the bush at Houghton Bay.
She said leaking water had pooled and blocked the paths before the pipe burst yesterday.
"I've recently moved back from overseas for the last few months and it's just become really apparent that there's just billions of dollars worth of repairs to do, which seems quite sad really because water is obviously a very precious resource and we don't want to see it go to waste".
Water infrastructure top priority
The city's mayor said her council has no choice but to increase funding for the region's water provider.
The Wellington region's water woes have repeatedly made headlines this summer with threats of tougher water restrictions and large leaks cropping up almost daily.
Wellington Water has said it needs a share of $760 million from the region's councils to fix the broken network.
Mayor Tory Whanau told Nine to Noon water infrastructure was a top priority for the council.
"It's receiving $110 million this financial year. When we get to our LTP [Long Term Plan] in the next couple of weeks we're looking at increasing our funding... We kind of have no choice, we have to increase our funding so I'm confident that will go through."
Whanau couldn't say exactly what council would need to slash to make that increase.
"We've asked officers to come back. Do projects need to be deferred, do rates need to increase or do we do nothing? So that's the sort of stuff we're going to discuss on the 31st. It's going to be tough no doubt, but we know how serious the problem is and we take it very seriously."
A leak in the Wellington CBD earlier this month. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Meanwhile, Wellington Water said it was making ground on fixing big leaks around the region.
When asked about the leak at Houghton Bay, chief executive Tonia Haskell told Nine to Noon there will be an investigation into the cause.
"We're letting the people get on and fix the work at the moment and then we'll go back and look at what has gone wrong. Hands up, we don't always get it right. We do rely on our consumers and our customers to report these things and the residents of Houghton Bay have done a great job of that.
"Then we have to go back through our systems, our processes, and our people and see how we have been prioritising and was that given the right amount of attention at the right time."
But she said this week the region's water stock was in a good position and fixing large leaks helped to hold off further restrictions.
"Every bit helps and some of the leaks we're getting are quite large. I just walked past one coming out of a toby last night and sent it into our call centre. When you're losing litres per second, every little bit helps."
Haskell said it also helped that residents were responding to the current ban on outdoor sprinkler use, the catchment levels were up and the lakes were full.
