Hydrodynamic map showing faecal contamination

This latest animated hydrodynamic map showing faecal contaminated wastewater overflowing the city’s wastewater system when it rains and being circulated around our Waitemata Harbour by tidal currents, is compelling stuff. It’s part of the material Auckland Council is using to promote their new Safeswim program, of which Mayor Phil Goff said, will provide residents with transparent, accurate, real-time information on the quality of water at our main beaches and soon will follow a multibillion-dollar plan to clean up our water. In his October message he said, “It’s well overdue and it’s time to deliver 21st century standards for a world-class city. It’s our responsibility as Aucklanders to meet the cost of this, largely through our water charges”. So yet another increase in council charges coming our way, but people won’t complaint when it’s for a good cause. However it’s not quite that transparent, what about the Manukau Harbour, where Watercare has our council’s consent to discharge ‘Bypass Sewage’ (bypassed one or more stages of treatment) directly into the harbour and does so with hundreds of thousands of litres of partially treated wastewater during storm events many times a year. I’d like to see an animated hydrodynamic map of the Manukau, strangely, I can’t find one.
Auckland Council, with all its communication resources is becoming a guru at massaging residents and ratepayers into paying money. Project announcements are always accompanied with rhetoric like ‘world-class’ and ‘leading-edge’ to justify huge expense. The inference that a multibillion-dollar spend will bring 21st century standards, is false if it only cleans up a privileged few beaches. 
West Auckland people do not mind paying towards their responsibilities, it’s getting nothing for our money we detest. Given the recent revelations regarding Auckland Council spending, before we fork over yet more money, we want the details, because we want;
• To make sure the money is actually going to fix our overflowing drains,
• and not going to big Council salaries,
• or big Council resource consent fees,
• or big private sector Consultants,
• or get siphoned off to help offset Councils projected $10 billion shortfall.
We want this extra money doing stuff on the ground, done properly and not just in some other part of Auckland.

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