Be Sure to Wear Your Wellies

Normally there’s plenty of rain in Wellington, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 inches a year. So water hasn’t been something to worry about… they don’t even have water meters.

But last summer was dry, and people had to start conserving a little bit. For someone who grew up in Southern California, the water restrictions imposed on Wellingtonians were laughably easy to comply with, but the whole thing made them very upset.

It came to light that something like a quarter of all their water was being lost to leaks. And that without a substantial increase in local taxes, there’s no way those leaks are getting fixed this decade. It’s never been a problem so they just kind of let things get a bit out of hand.

I’d never noticed the many leaks before, but you know what? They’re everywhere down there!

There’s more political context… one of the divisive issues in the last election was the Labour Party trying to a do a big, difficult, expensive thing to make water infrastructure better and more fair. They lost bigly to the National Party who said, Nah, let’s just cut taxes and the infrastructure will sort itself out.

So, the rains came back, and the people sorta forgot / gave up, and the water still gushes out of holes in the pipes.

I wish there was a happy ending here, or some way to not see this story as exactly what’s going on with lots of big expensive difficult issues we face as a society.