Wellington Water is promising leaks will be fixed in under two weeks. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
Wellington Water is promising leaks will be fixed in less than 10 days, despite crumbling pipes and continuing financial woes.
Wellington Water: leaks, fixes and what to expect this summer
Its been plagued by old pipes and thousands of leaks, as well as a spreadsheet blunder earlier in the year which meant the agency had to go back to the six councils which own it asking for an extra $37.5 million dollars.
Last week, the entity's chief executive detailed how it would take 11 years to fix the backlog of broken pipes.
24 kilometres were repaired last year but there's only enough funding to mend nine kilometres this year.
Despite that, Wellington Water's director regulatory services Charles Barker told Nine to Noon they were still able to get on top of leaks.
"We're very confident that we can keep it at a sustainable level, what we say the amount of leaks that would occur over 10 days we can fix within 10 days. So the big difference the public will see is a huge reduction of the leaks and any leak that does spring up, they can be pretty confident that we're going to be on to it within 10 days or so," Barker said.
He said there's a big emphasis on repairing the pipes because Wellington Water was in a position where they were on top of the leaks and now needed to focus on renewable pipes.
Leak numbers have dropped from thousands across the network to under 400, he said.
"Last year we had literally thousands of leaks and a backlog, and that was leading to a really high risk of the water restrictions. Since then with the additional funding the councils have given us, we've worked really over the winter and we've got that number down to 387 now."
Although Wellington Water did not have universal metering, it estimated water loss levels were down to 41 percent from 50 percent, but Baker was confident that figure was even lower.
He said the city's risk of dropping into level two water restrictions had dropped to 40 percent.
Meanwhile the risk of going into level three water restrictions had lowered from 70 percent last year to 14 percent.
For level four water, it was now down to only four percent from 33 percent.
But Wellington Water still wants households and businesses to be mindful of their water use.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.