WELLINGTON, New Zealand — On a street in the suburb of Karori, water has been bubbling up through the asphalt since July. The council has marked it with a cone. Residents have named it.
New Zealand’s capital loses about 42 percent of the treated drinking water it produces before it reaches a tap, according to the regional water utility’s annual report released last week, the worst rate of any city in the country and among the highest in the developed world. About 1,700 leaks were open at the end of September, and the utility estimates that 30 percent of the city’s 2,500 kilometers of pipe is beyond its design life. Some sections were laid in the 1890s.
The utility, Wellington Water, now puts the cost of bringing the network to an acceptable standard at 4.8 billion New Zealand dollars, or $2.9 billion, over 20 years, in a city of 215,000 people. The figure has doubled since 2021. Wellington has endured summer water restrictions for three years running, and the utility has warned that without a new reservoir, there is a one-in-four chance of supply failing in a dry summer by 2030.
“We are a capital city that cannot guarantee water in February,” said Rangi Te Whiu, the utility’s chief operating officer. “That is not a maintenance problem. That is the consequence of 40 years of deciding to spend on something else.”
The dispute over how to pay has consumed local politics. The national government last year scrapped a plan by its predecessor to merge the country’s water assets into regional entities, and instead requires councils to set up financially independent water companies that can borrow against future charges. Wellington’s council voted in August to establish such a company with three neighboring councils, a decision that will shift water charges off property rates and onto separate bills from 2027. The utility’s modeling suggests the average household bill will roughly double, to about 2,400 dollars a year, by 2032.
Council member Priya Ramaswamy, who voted against the plan, argued that the city was being asked to take on debt it cannot see the end of. “We are told the pipes are a disaster and the only fix is a company whose first act is to borrow 2 billion dollars,” she said. “The pipes did not vote for that.” Supporters respond that the alternative, funding repairs from rates, would require annual increases of 15 percent or more. Rates in Wellington rose 16.9 percent last year, the largest increase in the country.
The problem is national. A 2023 government report estimated that New Zealand needed to spend between 120 billion and 185 billion dollars on water infrastructure over 30 years, and the small, hilly, earthquake-prone capital is simply where the arithmetic has become visible first. Wellington’s wastewater network is in similar condition; a main sewer pipe collapsed in 2020, and treated and untreated sewage flowed into the harbor for several weeks.
In Karori, the cone remains. Mr. Te Whiu said the leak was 57th on the suburb’s priority list, which ranked by volume and risk. “I understand that is unsatisfying,” he said. “I can tell you that the 56 ahead of it are worse.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 5 of the European edition with the headline: Wellington Loses 40 Percent of Its Drinking Water to Leaks. Fixing It Will Cost More Than the City Has.
