Proposed He Rautaki Wai Āwhātanga

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This StoryMap supports the development of Wellington Water's He Rautaki Wai Āwhātanga | Stormwater Management Strategy. Wellington Water manages the council-owned network of pipes and drains that collects and carries rainwater away from urban areas and eventually into the sea. This rainwater, combined with the pollutants it picks up on the way, is known as stormwater. As our cities have developed, stormwater coming out of the pipe network has contributed to poor water quality in our urban streams, rivers, and harbours.

Wellington Water, and our communities, aspire to have healthy water in our waterways. In addition, Wellington Water is required to gain a resource consent from Greater Wellington Regional Council for stormwater discharged from the pipe network.

In mid-2023, we’ll apply for a long-term consent for stormwater discharges in Porirua, Wellington, Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt. We’re developing a Stormwater Management Strategy, which will underpin the resource consent. The strategy has a detailed focus on improving water quality which will be integrated with broader stormwater management aims of reducing flooding and erosion, sustainable urban growth and climate adaptation. You can read the Proposed Stormwater Management Strategy.  here .

We’re also applying for long-term consents covering wet weather overflows from the wastewater network, that are also part of our journey to wai ora. Find out more about reducing wastewater network overflows.  here .

People in our region want wai ora (healthy water). We know this will be a long journey, up to 100 years, to restore the mauri and health of our waterways. The community outcomes for water quality and the description of this journey are described in the documents produced for the  Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Te Awarua-o-Porirua . Wellington Water, and our communities, want wai ora (healthy water).

To help guide our journey, we’ve developed the following objectives and principles:

1. Safeguard aquatic ecosystem health, biodiversity and mahinga kai (that is, the fish, plants and other life in our waterways and the ability to gather them for food)
2. Ensure waterways are suitable for recreation (such as swimming) and Māori customary uses.
3. Support sustainable growth.

We have identified three key principles that will bind the way we achieve the three objectives:

1. Mahi tahi - working together
2. Ki uta ki tai - integrated catchment management (that is, taking a holistic view from the mountains to the sea)
3. Adaptive management - using monitoring, investigations and research to continually adapt and improve

The vision for our Stormwater Management Strategy is:

We are on a journey to transform water in the region from Hangarua (the wai is currently altered, which means mauri is degraded or absent) to Te Ika Rō Wai (a pure form of water that you would expect to find in the head of Maui’s fish, relating to where Te Whanganui-a-Tara is in Te Ika a Maui). This transformation will require collaborative effort by all who live in and care for the Whaitua (translated in this case as ‘catchment’).  

At a national level, regulations are built around the concept of Te Mana o Te Wai – the life-supporting capacity of freshwater. Te Mana o te Wai recognises the importance of the relationship Māori have with wai/water and to water management across Aotearoa New Zealand. It fundamentally and explicitly states that the health and wellbeing of wai is to be prioritised first.

In the past, water helped shape and create our landforms and enabled us to gather food, seek shelter and settle. The region was cloaked in abundant forests, supporting natural environments such as streams, rivers, and wetlands out to the harbours and coastal margins. The state of wai ora enabled people to thrive across the region.

Unfortunately, in the past 100 years, there has been a pattern of water quality degradation. The influx of non-Māori settlers challenged and changed land ownership and traditional waterway approaches to enable economic wellbeing, in the form of urban development. Forests were cleared, streams were piped, rivers channelised and the coastal estuary reclaimed to provide land for development.

Piped networks for stormwater and wastewater, while typically separated systems in our region, were sometimes connected by design or accident. Where this occurs, untreated wastewater can be discharged into the environment.

The graphic below illustrates the ways that contaminants can enter the stormwater network.

The wastewater network is a critical public health intervention that has saved numerous lives. In the Wellington region, these networks originated in the 1890s to reduce outbreaks of illness, such as typhoid and dysentery, that swept through the urbanised areas. Today the council-owned wastewater networks are vast series of pipes and connections that carry waste from toilets and sinks to one of four wastewater treatment plants: Porirua, Karori and Miramar in Wellington, and Seaview in Lower Hutt. The sludge is collected and the treated effluent is discharged via long outfalls to the ocean.

However, untreated wastewater can get into the stormwater system which can result in unsafe water for swimming and playing, excessive algal growth that degrades ecosystem health, and contaminated shellfish that are unhealthy for humans to eat. The three most common ways that untreated wastewater gets into the stormwater network are via:

• Private cross-connections – i.e. a private wastewater lateral is incorrectly connected to the public stormwater pipe
• Leaking private or public wastewater pipes
• Wastewater overflows out of public manholes, pump stations, and private gully traps – either caused by heavy rain known as ‘wet weather overflows’ or ‘dry weather blockages’ (i.e. pipe blockages caused by putting inappropriate items down the pipes such as wet wipes or grease/fat, tree root intrusions, or collapsed pipes.)   

Additional Information

Please also see the Wellington Water webpages on  Stormwater  and  Wastewater .

Our stormwater management strategy uses the vision, objectives and principles discussed above to work towards improving water quality. For more information click on the "Future Stormwater Management" navigation tab above.

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Stormwater management needs to change if we are to improve the health of our streams, rivers, and harbours. The significant future development planned across our catchments, combined with our changing climate and need to reduce emissions, risks further degradation if an alternative approach is not adopted.

This page highlights the strategic approaches in the proposed  Stormwater Management Strategy   to help address existing issues and create transitional change to support Our Journey to Wai Ora, using the principles of Te Mana o te Wai. In this section we go into more detail on the actual stormwater activities that are outlined in the Proposed Stormwater Strategy. Many of these activities and actions require leadership as well as partnership and collaboration between local and central government, Wellington Water, our communities and mana whenua, so that the potential of the Stormwater Management Strategy can be realised.

The Stormwater Management Strategy relies on two concurrent workstreams.

Workstream 1 focuses on maintaining the status of our existing waterways and undertaking programmes of activity to investigate, characterise and sequence our catchments for Workstream 2 SCaMP delivery.

Managing hydraulic neutrality is described more fully   here  

Universal Responses include:

• Source control of copper and zinc contamination from building materials.
• Litter traps to reduces the amount of plastics and other pollution from washing into drains.
• Ensuring new development does not increase the risk of down stream flooding.
• Site-specific sub-catchment management plans for large new developments (over 3000m ² ), that require water sensitive urban design to manage flows and potential contamination.

For new and existing high-risk sites this includes:

• Audits to identify best practice options to reduce or avoid contaminated runoff.

In addition, we have defined five programmes of investment that we are seeking to continue, refine and enhance over the next 35 years. These will work in concert with Workstream 2 to sequence, plan and deliver a series of capital improvements across the existing networks.

A major component of Workstream 2 is the use of water sensitive design principles, well-designed  treatment devices , and the development of sub-catchment stormwater management plans (SCaMPs). SCaMPS refer to Sub-catchment (stream, suburb or neighbourhood) plans to manage stormwater runoff for the purpose of improving water quality and ecosystem health.

These SCaMPs are comprised of three components:

• Planning
  • Reduce contamination at source (e.g. find and fix cross-contamination, information and education for residents).

• Projects
  • Capture and treat stormwater (e.g. upgrade pipes and drains, create wetlands, rain gardens.

• Community
  • Support local initiatives (e.g. planting to reduce stream scouring).

We have to shift the way we manage rainwater that falls on urban areas to help reduce pollution of our harbours, rivers and streams.

Find out more about stormwater and what you can do to reduce pollution

Read more about the Proposed  Stormwater Management Strategy  or  email us directly .

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