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is captured in the “Towards 80-30-80” strategy. It demonstrates a number of recommendations to build resilience, and a longterm programme of investment options to reduce the number of days it takes to restore water to parts of the region. The objective is to provide 80 percent of Wellington Water’s customers, within 30 days of a major earthquake, with at least 80 percent of their water needs. Cardno’s technical director of infrastructure strategy Antony Cameron says it was only days after the Kaikoura earthquake that the community aspects of 80-30-80 strategy were stepped towards action. “The focus was providing the community with alternatives to the network as a low-cost and quick solution to ensure residents would be able to access local sources of water.” Work streams in 80-30-80 focus on factors such as complexity, cost, timeframe to deliver and value for money. Antony says this helped focus resources on projects that were likely to deliver the most resilience benefit in the final programme. “The flexibility was proven in the speed that we were able to meet central government’s call to accelerate investment in water resilience initiatives at the end of 2016. “The solid regional model and clear storytelling was an important part of securing funding in Budget 2017.” Delivering the multiple strands of Community Infrastructure Resilience is programme manager Andy Brown. The work is co-funded through $6 million of central government funding, with Upper Hutt, Hutt City, Porirua and Wellington City councils matching the contribution with an additional $6 million together. “With $12 million in funding, and just 12 months to do it, our team have worked with a challenging programme,” says Andy. “The water sources need to be confirmed as viable, water treatment processes designed and established – but not for routine use. This is a big deviation from standard water treatment processes.
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“Right now we’re in the thick of collaborating with Wellington’s emergency management sector to finalise the ‘how’ of the distribution network. Like everything about this programme, it is designed to be flexible. We can all be very proud of what’s been achieved for the people of Wellington within such a short time.”
Searching for emergency water Investigation into alternative water sources included assessment of all freshwater surface bodies. Although this investigation identified 11 surface water locations, it found huge gaps in the region for reliable emergency water sources. Cardno found a solution by identifying the potential for groundwater aquifers within the fractured basement rocks of the region that could provide a sustainable withdrawal rate of one litre per second or greater. This is the minimal requirement to supply the population of the area. Cardno was engaged to fast-track water resilience initiatives from the 80-30-80 strategy, which included the drilling of emergency groundwater bores.
Community Infrastructure Resilience Programme The Community Infrastructure Resilience Programme is delivering 22 low-cost modular water treatment stations, a comprehensive water distribution network and an integrated emergency plan. Antony Cameron says the key to unlocking water supply resilience is making resilience simple and communicating clearly. “To me, resilience is about asking what my friends or family would consider reasonable in the circumstances. “We knew we would have a big problem on our hands but we needed some real data to get a good understanding of the scale of this problem.” Cardno turned to the use of cellular analytics to understand how people move in and around the region. This data proved invaluable to the resilience team who quickly worked out there