Wellington’s mayor is looking to reopen South Coast beaches as soon as this weekend, with testing showing low sewage contamination after the catastrophic Moa Point failure.
This is despite earlier suggestions the coastline could be off-limits for months as millions of litres of untreated sewage continue to be pumped 1.8km out to sea.
The area’s beaches have since been closed, but Mayor Andrew Little said that could soon change as water sampling showed “low, negligible, or zero levels of contamination”.
“The risk looks pretty low, so we want to get to that point later this week where we can communicate that,” Little told the Herald.
Faeces and toilet paper could be earlier seen in the surf off Tarakena Bay when the facility’s short outfall pipe was discharging sewage, but since the long outfall pipe has been back in action, a majority of readings for areas including the popular Lyall Bay, Island Bay, and Ōwhiro Bay beaches have been within safe swimming levels.
“At some point with the benefit of actual data, you’ve got to look at that, be realistic, be practical, and make, I think, a more accurate assessment about what the risk is,” Little said.
It is despite Wellington Water saying the sampling data is only a snapshot in time, and should not be taken to mean it is safe to swim, as conditions can change quickly.
Asked whether people could be allowed back at the beaches this weekend, Little said he aimed to be able to change the council’s messaging by the end of this week, but stressed it would be a matter of personal responsibility for individual beachgoers to decide whether they wished to swim.
“You can’t keep telling people to stay off the beach when there’s no evidence of significant risk,” he said.
“It’s about honing down what is the real risk, what are the parts that you should stay away from, but what are the parts that are usable with such a small level of risk,” the mayor said.
Asked if he personally would be comfortable swimming off the South Coast, Little said “based on the information so far, yes”.
The current public health advice states people should stay off the South Coast beaches to avoid getting sick, with swimming, diving, and gathering or eating kaimoana off-limits along the coast.
Wellington Water has installed signage and had workers patrolling in the area to advise would-be beach-goers of the risk.
The organisation said sampling results “can vary significantly, even across samples taken in close proximity of time or location”.
“That’s why we can’t draw conclusions about current conditions from one day’s data,” Wellington Water’s most recent update stated.
There is also a rāhui in place on the southern coast from Ōwhiro Bay to Breaker Bay, with local iwi Taranaki Whānui expressing “profound disappointment” over the situation’s impact on the natural environment.
It is unclear what a change in the rules would mean for the rāhui, with Little saying that would be a matter for iwi.
“Their view was that as long as this untreated sewage is going into the ocean, then they think that the mauri [spirit] of the ocean is going to be affected, and so they may not change the rāhui, but they were very clear to me it doesn’t get in the way of public health advice we might give about people going on the beach and going for a swim in the sea,” Little said.
In the days after the plant failed, Wellington Water chief executive Pat Doughtery said it could take months before it was safe to swim in the area.
A map made by Calypso Science showed how the plume of contaminated water was moving around the area.
The Moa Point Plant failure is now at the centre of a Government inquiry, which is soon to kick off to investigate what caused the facility to fail.
Ethan Manera is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.