Tawara o te Wai – Water New Zealand’s podcast series 

Drought – what happens when water demand exceeds the ability of suppliers to meet the needs of communities?  How do we ensure people get access to safe drinking water while  not depleting water from our rivers and the wider environment?

Wellington’s real risk of water shortages this summer has brought home the need to prepare for more extreme weather and build better long-term water resilience.

The blame for the capital’s water woes has been on the city’s aging leaking infrastructure. But the impact of climate change also played a big role in Wellington’s water shortages these past months.

It’s now recognised that the longer drier months and extreme rainfall events will become the new norm into the future.   That’s why planning for extreme weather and drought is now a key challenge for water utilities both here and overseas.

In our latest Tawara o te Wai podcast, hosts Jon Reed and Hannah Edmond spoke to Wellington Water’s chief executive Tonia Haskell and Meyrick Gough, the technical director of South East Water in the UK  – a utility that supplies drinking water to 2.3 million people in the southeast of England.

There, the climate in recent years has been affected by longer, dryer spells and recent droughts That’s sparked the development of detailed resilience planning focusing on the impact of more extreme weather scenarios.

Meyrick explains the work underway and we also talk about how vital it is that communities are brought into the picture.