Wait, before you scroll away...
unless you want to be drinking
sheep turds
and swimming in your own sewage,
you should really stick with me here.
Now to show you I'm serious,
I may not be Margot Robbie
explaining the stock market in the bath,
but I'm going to explain to you
why water infrastructure matters
in the freezing cold waters
of the Wellington Harbour.
Oh, oh!
It’s so cold!
Woo!
We take for granted
what goes into making sure
that clean water comes out of our taps
and our poo goes away
when we flush the toilet.
But underneath New Zealand
there’s 88,000 kilometres of pipes
transporting all of that.
That's enough to wrap around the planet
more than twice.
Not to mention the water
and sewage treatment facilities,
the reservoirs, the pumping stations,
the stormwater systems.
I mean, when you think about it,
it's a mind-boggling
amount of infrastructure
that our lives
would fundamentally change without.
But for decades we've been underfunding
how much it costs to maintain
and upgrade these systems,
and as a result, they're failing.
Whoo!
I’ve got to get out
it’s so cold.
You’re probably heard of
the Three Waters proposal -
one idea of how we could deal with this.
But for the last three years,
we've argued about everything
except water infrastructure.
And now the new government plans
to scrap the Three Waters proposal.
But the problems still remain.
So today
we're going to mostly
ignore all of that
and just look at what water infrastructure is,
how it benefits all of us,
and how we can make sure that for us
and future generations,
our poo continues
to go away when we flush the toilet.
Because we haven't been investing
in our infrastructure,
the infrastructure that we've got
is degrading.
It's beginning to fail.
And without investment,
it's going to get worse.
We'll see more leakages on the streets.
You'll see more gushing
geysers of water,
and that might go into your river,
or your lake, or your harbour
where you're going to swim,
or where you’re going
to collect your seafood.
With climate change,
we're going to see increased sea level rise,
more strong storm events.
If we aren't able to manage that,
we're going to end up
with more flooding.
Between $125 billion and $185 billion
is required to be invested
in New Zealand's water infrastructure
over the next 30 years.
That's at least a double,
if not a treble,
of what we spend on
an annual basis on water.
Those figures
don't include
any amount for climate change.
Our water infrastructure
can be broken down
into three categories,
i.e. the three waters.
That’s drinking water,
wastewater, and stormwater.
That water system starts at the source
like a river, lake,
or aquifer under the ground.
From there it’s collected and taken
to a water treatment facility
where it's filtered and treated
so it's safe to drink.
That's then transported
through a network of pipes and supplies
all the water in your home -
from your tap to your shower and toilet.
But once any of that water goes down
the drain, it becomes wastewater.
Another series of pipes then transport
that to a wastewater treatment facility
where any solids are filtered out
and the remaining water treated
so that it's harmless before
being discharged
back into the environment.
Alongside those systems is stormwater,
a series of drains,
gutters, and pipes
that's meant to make sure
all the water that falls from the sky
is collected and dispersed
before it floods our communities.
A big issue with New Zealand's
pipe network is age.
The average age of our pipes
is 45 years old,
with some sections
as old as 120 years.
And that's partly why
we lose a fifth of all the water
we treat to leaks.
And last year there was over
4000 sewage overflows across the country.
Hey mate!
Heya Baz, how you going?
Marnie Prickett is a researcher
at the University of Otago
who studies
the impact
water quality is having on our health.
Right now,
people can sort of trust
that they turn the water on,
good, clean,
drinking water should come out,
they flush their toilet,
their poo goes away.
But if we don't improve our systems
well enough,
like, we probably just can't trust that
that'll be the case forever, right?
A lot of people can't trust that
that's the case at the moment.
You know, we've got lots of sewage
overflows -
Auckland is a classic for that.
You know,
every time it rains,
and it doesn't have to be particularly
heavy rain,
you get overflows of sewage
going into the beaches.
And there’s other parts of the country
where that’s really common -
including Wellington as well.
Drinking water,
I think people kind of
maybe think that's
a little bit more reliable,
but when it goes wrong,
it can go really, really wrong.
Like Havelock North.
Can you explain
what happened in Havelock North?
Havelock North, 2016,
there was some heavy rain
in combination
with a badly maintained bore
and sheep faeces
that flowed off the ground
down into the bore
and contaminated that water supply.
The estimate is between 6000 to 8000
people got really sick.
They got campylobacter,
which is a horrible gastro bug.
42 people ended up in hospital.
Four people died
from complications of getting that bug.
It was a really big deal
and I had hoped that it was kind of a
wake up call for people that
that's that we really needed
to be thinking
about our water infrastructure
a little bit more.
But the conversation about
Three Waters has really gotten dragged away
from those kind of fundamental
public health issues and
into nastier places.
Far out.
Can you paint a bit of a picture of what
drinking water will look like
for everyday New Zealanders
if we don't invest
in the treatment facilities?
What it will look like is
probably riskier water supplies.
You know, at the moment,
we've got about 34,000 people a year
get sick from drinking water.
But that could increase if our
drinking water treatment facilities
are just much more under pressure.
Maybe intermittent supplies as well.
It's not just going to be
a question of more water
hitting our systems,
it's going to be
a question of less water too.
So in some parts of the country,
drought is going to be a real threat
to people's
drinking water supplies as well.
And just a harder life.
Drinking water
is something that a lot of us
take for granted,
but not having
drinking water for a few days,
you feel that.
Water is just so an everyday necessity
in everything that we do.
This failing infrastructure
is also breaking
our connection with the ocean.
Sewage overflows have made these signs
warning against swimming
or collecting seafood
a common sight across Aotearoa.
Porirua local, Pania Rei
has started a petition
to get local agencies to address
sewage overflows in her community.
There's been almost 2000
sewage spills
here in the past five years,
and she says over the past
50 years,
the wastewater system
has destroyed her
iwi’s connection with their moana.
Rukutane Point is just around the corner.
And Rukutane Point is where
the wastewater treatment plant
disposes of all the water
and it just...
with the tide it
just goes, ‘boom’,
back into the beach.
All the rocks,
they’re all mahinga kai spots.
And that's where,
like, a lot of our pāua,
kina, shellfish come from.
Well, they used to come from,
but this whole area,
Nah...
not anymore.
So you guys wouldn’t feel safe
to eat the kaimoana
from around here anymore?
Nah, not at all.
I know...
It’s hard to describe because, like,
our people love kaimoana
and like, our people
have always eaten kaimoana
cause we’re a coastal people.
And it's like a sense of pride.
Like, when you’re at the marae
if you’re at a [Ngāti] Toa marae
there should be kaimoana.
Because we're a coastal iwi,
like that's how we show
our manaaki, but...
like, this is where we get it from
and there's the potential
that we could get sick,
or our manuhiri could get sick -
and it looks bad on us.
How does that feel?
It feels like shit.
I love kaimoana!
I love pāua,
I love kina,
I love mussels,
I love any kind of fish, oysters, everything.
And like...
we should be able to get it here.
But we can't.
And it’s like, that's my right -
that’s my right as a Māori!
I should be allowed to eat my seafood.
How does it feel to be disconnected
from your own moana like that?
It hurts.
It hurts in a way
that I don't think I can describe.
Because my iwi were always described
as being on the water.
That's what we did,
we were always on on the water,
we were like fishermen.
And there's a lot of
knowledge around that
that I don't think
my people will ever get back
and that will never be something
that I could pass down to my kids.
Because I
never got the opportunity to learn.
Our water systems
aren't coping well now,
and there are even bigger
challenges on the horizon.
We saw first-hand
how our stormwater systems,
and also our drinking water
and wastewater systems,
were overwhelmed by the
Auckland floods
and Cyclone Gabrielle
this year.
And climate change
means those extreme weather events
could just be a taster of what's to come.
This field in Northcote, Auckland is
a great example of the wins
we can experience when we address
water infrastructure.
It's designed
to take all of the overflow
water in the event of a storm.
So when the floods happened here
in Auckland in January,
it actually completely filled up
with several Olympic-size
swimming pools worth of water.
And while it did end up
breaking the banks,
the surrounding community was spared
a lot of the flooding that other
suburbs in Auckland weren't.
While this solution
couldn't just be applied
to every suburb in Auckland
or every city in New Zealand.
It's a good example of
when you have the resources
and opportunity
to think differently
about your water infrastructure,
the kinds of wins the surrounding
community can experience.
There seems to be no debate
that our water systems need investment,
so why is there so much resistance?
James Gough is a
Christchurch City councilor
and has been a staunch
opponent of the Three Waters
reform proposal,
mostly because Christchurch
has already made
$6.9 billion of investment
that other areas of New Zealand haven't.
I mean, yeah, you've spent this $6.9 billion,
but isn't it a bit like a house?
You know, you buy the house
for a certain amount,
you renovate it,
but over time
it degrades, right, to the point where
it's pretty much a teardown.
And isn't that the case
with New Zealand's water infrastructure?
Yeah. Yeah.
Look, in a lot of cases that is true.
I think Christchurch is a bit different
because we were beneficiaries
of multi-billion
dollar investment program
after the earthquake.
So we've got hundreds of kilometres
of new pipes and infrastructure
under the ground.
That’s not to say that, you know,
we don't deserve to do our fair
share and be part of a solution where
there are others
who are not in that same position.
But it's probably not all on Christchurch
ratepayers to carry the can,
when we've done things pretty well,
for whatever reason.
One of the most contentious parts
of the now scrapped
Three Waters proposal
was its inclusion of co-governance,
which would give iwi equal representation
to local councils.
Does the community oppose
Three Waters for the same reason
the Council does?
I think some people
in the community don't.
Some people that are, oppose it
for very intelligent reasons.
I think there are some people
that oppose it
for very unintelligent reasons,
sometimes frankly, just racist reasons.
I've seen it bring out,
you know,
some of the worst in people
and some of the worst in communities,
which I think is really sad
because that's been a distraction
to a really important conversation.
If everyone's on the same page
that this needs done and urgently, like,
how do we get to the point
where we can get it done?
Yeah, look, I totally agree with you
and I think there is a real risk
that what people are doing
is kicking
the can down the road
and it's been,
you know, politicised,
which means that people start
talking at cross-purposes
and everyone's forgotten about
what the whole issue was.
All the political
parties are acknowledging
that infrastructure in water,
we need to increase
the amount we're investing.
I don't want to be coming here
and having a conversation
with you or somebody
when I've got grey hair
saying you didn't listen.
We have to seize the moment
and make sure that we don't forget
and we actually do the
investment that's required.