Safe water every day for everyone Kia tiakina te wai hei oranga mō te katoa
We are actively monitoring the immediate response efforts at Moa Point
The Water Services Authority – Taumata Arowai is not the primary regulator when it comes to wastewater overflows or breaches of wastewater consents. That is the role of the relevant regional council, in this case Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC).
We do have a statutory role to provide national-level oversight and recommendations about the regulation, management and performance of wastewater networks, along with drinking water and stormwater networks. In the case of the incident at Moa Point, we are monitoring the response and investigation into what happened to mitigate the environmental impacts and reduce the risk of this happening in the future.
We also set national performance standards and targets for wastewater networks to improve the consistency, reliability and cost-effectiveness of these networks. Late last year we set four national wastewater standards, including new requirements for monitoring and reporting of overflows and by-passes, which will come into force over the next few years.
See the national wastewater environmental performance standards
Latest news and events
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Nitrate in drinking water - facts and figures
18 December 2025Find out about nitrate in drinking water, how the maximum acceptable value of nitrate in New Zealand's Drinking Water Standards is set, and how suppliers know their water is safe.Find out more -
New campaign launched to keep campers’ drinking water safe this summer
1 December 2025With summer coming, the Water Services Authority has launched a campaign to help campground and campsite operators take all the right steps to provide safe drinking water for their visitors.Find out more -
Wastewater environmental performance standards – online information session
28 November 2025Join us at this online information session. We’ll go through what the standards are, how they will be implemented and the transitional arrangements for councils.Event StandardsFind out more -
New wastewater standards to cut costs, protect environment and public health
28 November 2025The Government has announced New Zealand’s first-ever national wastewater environmental performance standards developed by the Water Services Authority – Taumata Arowai.Find out more
Latest insights into water services performance out now
We have published the latest insights into water services performance – the Drinking Water Regulation Report 2024 and Network Environmental Performance Report 2023/24, highlighting overall performance and the challenges faced by our drinking water and wastewater networks.
Many more drinking water suppliers are now actively identifying and managing risks to drinking water safety following action taken by the Water Services Authority – Taumata Arowai. Improved sector reporting also means that we have a better understanding of water network performance overall.