The tragedy of Wellington spilling 70 million litres of untreated sewage per day into the Cook Strait prompted me to look again at this BayBuzz article from July 2025: Poor marks for HB wastewater treatment.
In that article, with AI assistance we compared the efficacy of Napier and Hastings existing wastewater treatment to international best practice. The briefing document is quite detailed, but the conclusions were easily summarized:
- Hawke’s Bay’s use of trickling filters and offshore discharge is increasingly outdated by both technical and cultural standards.
- Advanced systems now treat wastewater as a recoverable resource, aiming for zero discharge and energy neutrality.
- The current system is likely non-compliant with future expectations under Te Mana o te Wai and evolving regulatory standards.
We now have a new entity in formation (Water Services Council-Controlled Organisation – WSCCO) to plan, manage, upgrade and pay for the wastewater (and stormwater and drinking water) services and infrastructure now provided by Napier, Hastings and CHB Councils.
Wendie Harvey has been appointed as Advisory Board Chair for WSCCO, with Steven Joyce, John Loughlin, and George Reedy as Board members.
I would urge the WSCCO team headed by Interim Chief Executive Chris O’Reilly to digest the report referred to above. There’s plenty more where that came from.
Presumably, however, much of the team carried into the ‘new’ WSCCO will be formed from the councils’ present staff. I’m not sure that offers much hope for fresh or more modern thinking. Compounding the problem, word on the street is that NCC is insisting mightily on retaining its own in-house water staff, in characteristic patch-protection mode.
The three councils prepared a comprehensive Water Services Delivery Plan – detailing infrastructure shortcomings, projects required, and costs involved – for the Government as part of the WSCCO approval process.
BayBuzz summarized key elements of that plan here: Lifting the fog on HB water costs.
CHB has historic non-compliance issues with its wastewater systems; NCC is listed as “Moderate non-compliance” and is needing to spend about $51 million by FY2030/31 to build a new wastewater outfall to Hawke Bay; HDC is largely compliant, with “Low risk Non-Compliant” indicated for its Clive discharge outfall, Clive WWTP bores and Waipatiki WWTP discharge.
As it stands NCC is consented to discharge treated wastewater into the Bay until 2037, and HDC until 2049.
Time to think about better solutions!?
Discharging our waste into the sea [or any other waterway] is a very primitive solution. I grew up in Wanganui. There, [at that time], waste water was discharged into the river. Imagine boating, swimming, learning to waterski, rowing, sailing etc, in that soup. It was disgusting!
Many countries in the world are landlocked. Many have many times our population. How do they manage to dispose of wastewater?
Surely we can think of much more environmentally sensitive solutions.