Officials give 4 pm update on Auckland floods. Video / NZ Herald
Aucklanders are being urged to stay away from closed beaches and avoid contaminated floodwaters, as a second deluge threatens to again swamp Auckland’s hard-hit storm and wastewater network.
As at Monday morning, three of 10 pump stations – two in North Shore and one in Westmere – were offline and weren’t expected to be operational for at least a week, after being overwhelmed by Friday’s floods.
Water treatment plants at Pukekohe and Helensville had also been put out of action.
While crews were prioritising overflows causing damage to private property, most of the clean-up work wouldn’t be done until after the rain stopped – and an incoming atmospheric river tomorrow night was likely to inundate the network again.
Auckland Council’s head of planning for healthy waters Nick Vigar warned people not to go swimming at city beaches – virtually all of which remain no-go zones until further notice – or in any floodwaters.
Otago University epidemiologist Professor Nick Wilson said contaminated floodwaters could carry nasty pathogens such as E. Coli, campylobacter, giardia, salmonella and cryptosporidium.
“All of these can be spread through waterborne infection, and in a big city like Auckland there’ll be a lot of bugs like these in the sewerage system,” he said.
“When it mixes with water, that’s a big problem. Any contact with the mouth or hands is a risk, as you only need a few viable organisms to cause an infection.”
Given this danger, Wilson had been alarmed to see images of Aucklanders paddling in flooded streets and parks.
“That’s just crazy.”
Flooding at Auckland Domain. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Auckland Emergency Management deputy controller Rachel Kelleher said those who did need to go into floodwaters should ensure they washed themselves and their clothes thoroughly afterwards.
It wasn’t clear how much contaminated water had already flowed into Auckland’s marine environment, or for how long no-swim advisories would stay in place.
Vigar said officials made the call to put city beaches under black flags on Sunday, following discussions with Watercare.
“We’ll stay in touch with [Watercare] over the next sort of 24 to 48 hours, but with the prospect of more rain coming through, we’ll just have to see where we’re at,” he said.
“Obviously, if we get significantly more rain, Watercare is going to really struggle to get their network back online.”
After a typical wastewater overflow event, a beach would be closed for 48 hours – but in this case, it wasn’t clear how long the city’s urban coast would be off-limits to swimmers.
“We won’t keep a blanket ban up for any longer than we have to, and I’d imagine that once we’re advised by Watercare that the network is performing well again, we’ll look to take [the black flags] down.”
Vigar couldn’t recall a time when so many of Auckland’s beaches had been closed at once.
“It’s a first that we’ve got this many black pins up, but we have a state of emergency . . . it’s a pretty extraordinary event.”
Wilson said the scale of the disaster underscored the urgent need for investment in water infrastructure.
In a paper published in the New Zealand Medical Journal last month, Wilson and Otago colleagues argued public discourse around the Three Waters reforms had been dominated by “anti-co-governance rhetoric, concerns around privatisation and loss of local control and alternative less comprehensive reform models”.
That debate, they said, had “drowned out” the underlying problems justifying the reforms.
“Whatever revisions we see to the Government’s Three Waters plans,” Wilson said, “we need to ensure that our water supplies and storm and sewerage systems can deal with what climate change is going to throw at us”.
