Business wants assurance over water supply after leak

Wellington Chamber of Commerce
Media Statement
Sunday 22 January 2017
Business wants assurance over water supply after leak

Wellington’s business community is seeking assurances from the City Council and the Regional Council that they are doing all they can to ensure the city has a sustainable and resilient water supply, says the Chamber of Commerce.

Chief Executive John Milford said he was concerned that the city came within hours of having water severely rationed at the weekend after a major leak was discovered in the only main supplying water to the central and eastern city.

“We came close to losing water for everything but essential services, and that would have been disastrous, causing huge disruption in the CBD and likely forcing most of it to be closed down.

“That would be a serious threat to our economy, not to mention the disruption to people’s lives as homes went without water.

“The Chamber highlighted this late last year as one of the serious resilience issues facing the city.

“We need to know that the councils are working on getting redundancies in place.

“We need to be hearing from them that they support the building of the proposed reservoir in Prince of Wales Park and an alternative pipeline into the city, and that they will get funding in place to make those projects happen as soon as possible. Perhaps they need to be talking also to central government to become involved.

“We simply cannot have a situation where the continued operation of the capital city is under threat because we have just one water pipeline and insufficient storage.

“Wellington Water did a great job on restricting the fallout this time but next time we may not be so lucky.”

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