New Zealand faces a crisis with our water infrastructure.
In the past week alone there has been a car destroyed by a burst main, a large portion of Lower Hutt without water for almost a day, and a sinkhole opening on a Wellington street.
This was not a week of freak accidents. This is the new normal.
For decades, report after report has been written about the degrading state of New Zealand’s water infrastructure.
They all found much the same thing: councils across the country have been under-investing in upgrading and replacing water infrastructure and, if this wasn’t remedied soon, the system was going to begin to fail.
And what do you know? Now it is.
Our pipe network currently has an average age of 45 years but some sections are as old as 120 years old.
This is partly why we lose a fifth of all the water we treat to leaks. Last year there were more than 4000 sewage overflows around the country.
Modelling carried out by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland found we need to increase investment by between $120 and $185 billion over the next 30 years to get our infrastructure where it needs to be.
The Three Waters proposal was one idea to address this. But for the past three years, the majority of the public discourse has focused on the governance structure, and not on the core problems.
Now the new coalition Government plans to repeal this proposal and explore their own solution.
In all of these discussions, we appeared to lose sight of the water infrastructure itself, and what the consequences would be for us now and in the future if we didn’t find a way to do the necessary upgrades.
In this documentary, the surrounding discussions are mostly set aside to focus on what water infrastructure is; the impacts of its degrading state; and what needs to be done to make sure, for us and future generations, our poo continues to go away when we flush the toilet.
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