The literal shitstorm that the people of Wellington are facing as the damaged Moa Point wastewater plant continues to pump raw sewage into Cook Strait is a sobering reminder of what can happen when we turn vital public assets over to transnational corporations.
The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) says that, while the environmental damage caused by the sewerage leak is tragic, it is not a surprise.
CAFCA Organiser Murray Horton says it is an all too familiar tale and one that Kiwis have heard many times when public infrastructure is sold or leased to private, often foreign-owned companies.
“Their main focus is on producing profits to please shareholders rather than on investing to develop or even maintain the assets with which they are entrusted”.
“After years of under-investment, the infrastructure degrades. The quality of the service declines or something more disastrous occurs, such as the breakdown at Moa Point. As usual, it will be taxpayers that ultimately pay the cost of cleaning up the mess,” Mr Horton says.
In 2017 Wellington City Council’s management arm Wellington Water contracted French transnational company Veolia to manage its four waste water treatment plants. Veolia specialises in managing services and utilities traditionally run by public authorities – namely water, waste and energy.
Wellington is not the only council in Aotearoa that is entwined with Veolia. It also has contracts with Papakura and Queenstown Lakes District councils and runs 30 waste water treatment plants and 35 water treatment plants across the country.
Veolia is a textbook transnational corporation. Its Website says it operates in 58 countries and has 218,000 employees. In 2025 it raked in a global revenue of NZ$81.7 billion.
It is also up to its neck in a string of controversies. The most high-profile was the contaminated water crisis in Flint, Michigan where more than 100,000 people were exposed to high lead levels in their drinking water in 2014-2015.
Veolia was charged with negligence for its role in the Flint water crisis. It denied wrongdoing but in 2025 reached a $US53 million settlement with the State of Michigan and some 26,000 individual claimants.
John Braddock from Socialist Equality Group has done a deep dive into Veolia’s record. He reports that it has faced similar controversies in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and California in the USA as well as labour disputes over cost cutting in Sussex and Sheffield in the UK.
The Shotover waste water treatment plant in Queenstown, which Veolia operates, has also been a source of controversy. It has received a number of infringement notices from Otago Regional Council for releasing excess partially treated effluent been discharged into the Kawarau and Shotover Rivers.
A day after Moa Point started spewing untreated sewerage into the sea off Wellington’s south coast the Post newspaper reported that a 2021 review of the plant found it was understaffed and staff lacked experience and oversight.
The report also said Veolia failed to carry our regular maintenance at the plant and critical equipment was obsolete, outdated and prone to failure.
Mr Horton says this should be a cautionary tale to any local body in New Zealand looking to sell or lease its assets or infrastructure.
“A decade ago Veolia tried to buy Citycare Water from Christchurch City Council. The deal fell through because Veolia was not prepared to pay the asking price and because it did not want to buy all of Citycare, which is what the Council wanted to sell. Christchurch dodged a bullet then and Citycare remains in public ownership but the issue of asset sales never goes away”.
“Infrastructure needs constant attention and investment. That is why it is best in the hands of public councils that are answerable to voters, not private companies that are answerable to shareholders”.