It is more than two weeks since the catastrophic failure of Wellington’s sewage treatment plant at Moa Point. Massive quantities of raw sewage continue to flow into Cook Strait. Many of Wellington’s beaches will likely be closed for months. 

The immediate cause of the failure appears to have been a blocked pipe. The inside of the facility was flooded, badly damaging the plant.  

Longer term, underinvestment made an incident like this almost inevitable. It was a question of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ But so far, most commentary has focussed more on blame than understanding why this is so.  

Former city councillor Simon Woolf blamed the disaster on a 2021 Council vote on Wellington’s long-term plan. He framed it as a choice between spending on critical infrastructure and spending on cycleways. 

At the meeting, Woolf argued that sewerage and water infrastructure should be prioritised. He and a handful of other councillors voted against increasing cycleway funding from $120 million to $226 million over ten years.  

They lost that vote. The same meeting rejected an option to allocate $391 million to a wastewater renewal project. 

Wellington Central Green MP Tamatha Paul was also a councillor at the time. She moved the proposal to increase spending on cycleways. 

New Zealand Herald reporter Ryan Bridge put Woolf’s argument to Paul. Paul pushed back. She claimed that Wellington Water lacked the capacity to deliver the $391 million project.  

Another former Councillor, Sean Rush, thinks Paul has a point. He noted that the decisions on wastewater and cycleways were “financially and procedurally separate,” and that the proposed wastewater project didn’t even focus on the Moa Point facility. 

So technically, Paul is right. The 2021 Council meeting on the long-term plan did not make a simple choice between spending on cycleways and spending on wastewater.  

But while Woolf’s analysis may be wrong technically, it is not wrong in essence. Cycleways are a ‘nice-to-have’ in a city struggling to manage the basics. And as Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project has pointed out, cycleways are not the only vanity project to be championed by Wellington’s local politicians.  

The convention centre, Tākina, cost a cool $180 million. The Town Hall restoration project is budgeted at $330 million and climbing.  

The Moa Point disaster cannot be attributed to one Council meeting in 2021. It is much worse than that.  

For years, councils have prioritised glamour projects over maintenance of essential infrastructure.