We Say/You Say: Leaks
Kia ora Kāpiti,
Have you had water supply cut off as a result of burst water mains? What other water problems are prevalent in your community?
Wellington residents are filing more than 50 complaints a day regarding the capital's ageing water infrastructure.
One leak near the Prime Minister's official residence in Tinakori Road has not been fixed since being first reported in September 2020.
Wellington Water spokesman Alex van Paassen says that some longer running leaks may not be showing up in data searches.
"Sometimes they get fixed but other nearby leaks are still going; sometimes the fix doesn't work, or a new leak pops up at the same place; sometimes they're private – private leaks can get into the neighbours at war territory," he said.
Van Paasen said that there were several reasons for the delayed fixes including Wellington Water's aging workforce, lack of skilled workers and an increase in work volume.
A presentation was delivered to Wellington City councillors in late-2020 showed that almost half of the cities pipes needed replacing, with $578 million needed to clear a variety of other accumulated issues.
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Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
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