Water, Water, Water
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Water, Water, Water
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New Zealand will never run out of water. That's not the problem.
We get around 550 cubic kilometres of rainfall a year, one of the highest per-capita freshwater endowments on earth. The question is not whether the water exists — it's whether we can get it out of the ground, through the pipes, treated to a safe standard and into the tap. On that, we're far more dependent on the outside world than most people realise.
We follow the chain from source to tap: the treatment chemicals we make here and the ones we don't, the 73,000 kilometres of pipe built mid-century and now past its design life, and the honest engineering answer on how long a network lasts without replacement parts — a serious degradation curve beginning within two to five years.
Plus Christchurch, which drinks deep artesian groundwater so clean it needs no chemical treatment at all, and would still be running long after everywhere else started to struggle. And Moa Point in February, which showed us what a major wastewater plant failing looks like with no external shock at all.
At The End Of The World is hosted by Nic Roland and produced by Jamie Thomas. More at ateotw.com