But although our Māori concerns were real, and valid, and part of what was guaranteed to Māori under the Treaty (undisturbed possession of fisheries, among other things) Wellington was not a Māori city. We needed a campaign that appealed to everyone.
The Clean Water Campaign did not initiate moves to improve Wellington’s waste disposal infrastructure. As far back as the 1970s, public pressure and reform of national legislation led Wellington City Council to commission Beca Carter-Caldwell Connell to do a study of treatment options for Wellington sewage.
In 1980 Beca Carter-Caldwell Connell recommended fine screening, high-rate primary treatment (involving putting the sewage into tanks for a while and skimming the oil and grease from the surface) and a long ocean outfall. Some small practical improvements were made, such as the closure of the Houghton Bay outfall in 1985.
Opposition increased to this proposal and to the fact that raw sewage, albeit sieved, would be still going into the sea. Sometimes this was dramatic for example when Labour City Councillor Helene Ritchie dumped several bags of raw sewage that had been washed up at Moa Point onto a Council works committee table (Evening Post, 12/4/86).
In 1986 the Wellington Clean Water Campaign was set up to lobby for land-based secondary treatment at a site away from Moa Point. We opposed what the milliscreen option as the “sieve, dump and hope approach?” (Dominion, 19/4/86).
If enough people asked for one, the Council would be forced to hold a poll on the $10 million loan for milliscreening at Moa Point. This gave us the opportunity to take the campaign to every Wellington resident – first with the poll petition and then with the poll itself. We produced leaflets and posters, held public meetings and took part in any and every council event held in relation to the poll. Our position was that sieving sewage did not solve the problem, a complete solution needed to be found and that it was the role of council to find it. Our slogan – ‘Vote Positive – Vote NO’ resonated with the people and we won. There would be no loan for a milliscreen-only option.
The Council then proposed a temporary milliscreening plant at Moa Point as stage one of a better scheme. Clean Water Campaign response, in the days before the Tūī ads was ‘yeah right’.
We argued that milliscreening at Moa Point without plans for treatment would only lead to a raw sewage open outfall at Moa Point and that it might endure for decades.
Our attention turned to supporting candidates for council who would take up the cause of an end to the routine dumping of raw sewage in the sea.
The Council was at that time led by Ian Lawrence, elected at the previous election and a long-time deputy to Sir Michael Fowler.
Ian Lawrence was a dedicated councillor and seeking, in his own way, to do the right thing.
But the political landscape had changed. Environmental and Māori concerns had a power to which he had not yet adjusted. The same was true of many of his supporters. They were people of their time, and their time had passed.
The Labour Party committed itself to cleaning up the coast. Its campaign, led by Jim Belich, an advertising executive without previous Council involvement was well-funded, professional and focussed on the failure of the existing Council to find a sewage solution.
Towards the end of the campaign Jim Belich took the advice of his old advertising agency and sharpened up his attack on Council inaction. A full-page advertisement appeared in the two local papers featuring a photo of a toilet on the beach and the headline: ‘Where does Ian Lawrence sit? It was a devastating blow. In October 1986, the Mayor and many of his Citizen Party colleagues lost their seats. Labour won the mayoralty and a majority on Council – something that had not happened before, and has not happened since. One new councillor, John Blincoe was a leader of the Clean Water Campaign. Everything looked positive for a real success.
Our achievement may have led to over-optimism on our part about the possibility of extending the solution to the Hutt Valley which also dumped raw sewage into the sea.
In 1987 Wellington City Council began negotiations with the Hutt Valley Drainage Board for a region-wide solution, and each party signed up for Joint Venture Agreement with Wellington City Council to build a secondary treatment plant and a temporary milliscreen was installed at Moa Point.
However, Council and Clean Water Campaign hopes for a regional solution foundered. No joint scheme could be agreed. Valuable time had been lost, new elections were pending and the people were rightly wanting action now, and not years ahead when Hutt Valley finally came to the table.
Wellington went it alone. The result after several years of frustrating delay cause by the search of a regional scheme was a plan for high quality tertiary treatment at Moa Point with a discharge of clean water only to the sea through a pipe 1.5 kilometres long.
This was not what we wanted. But it was what we could achieve. And we could say, truthfully, that sewage was no longer being dumped on the South Coast.
In 1998 Moa Point plant became fully operational; solids were removed to landfill and water only was allowed to go out the long outfall to sea.
We still have problems. Our ancient infrastructure, and the new systems, sometimes fail and allows sewage into the sea, especially in the harbour and sometimes along the southern bays. But this is now always seen as an urgent problem to be fixed in days – whereas for the best part of a century it was seen as a solution.
The Clean Water Campaign was a campaign with an idea whose time had come. It was, perhaps, ahead of its time in clearly linking Māori and Pākehā ideas and traditions and seeking a common solution but John Blincoe, one of the campaign founders said at the time of our success that it could not have happened without each perspective being taken into account. I agree.
Whether you call it ‘co-governance’ or just ‘listening to each other’ we should look at all the progress made in this campaign and others and push ahead, together.
Drawing on science and the cultural traditions of all our people, especially Māori with their perspective that looks back, and forward, a thousand years in this land, we can solve big environmental problems.
No one now looks at the south coast and suggests it would be a good idea to return to the dumping of raw sewage.
No one says ‘I wish we had saved that money and we could still see and smell the waste that used to wash up’.
The Clean Water Campaign provides an opportunity for learning in our schools – in physics, chemistry and biology and in history and social science. I hope one day someone will produce resources for our schools so the memory of this great campaign will not fade away.
Many of those most closely involved are no longer with us but we should think if them as we smell the clean air and swim in the clean water.
