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Speaker 1: New Zealand's water leakage problem. We know we've got one.

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Speaker 1: Turns out it's far worse than what we had anticipated.

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Speaker 1: New research suggests one hundred and twenty two million bucks

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Speaker 1: worth of the stuff as being lost from our pipes

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Speaker 1: each year. The worst European countries have leakage rates of

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Speaker 1: final six percent, ours twenty two percent. Nick Wilson, University

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Speaker 1: of Otago, Professor of Public Health, Nick Good to have

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Speaker 1: you on. Is it as bad as it sounds?

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Speaker 2: It's pretty bad when we do these international comparisons, and

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Speaker 2: the value of doing international comparisons really highlights what can

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Speaker 2: be done when a country actually invests properly in its infrastructure. So, yeah,

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Speaker 2: we're at twenty two percent of our pipe water leaking,

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Speaker 2: compared to Netherlands at five percent, Germany at six percent,

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Speaker 2: and lower rates in Australia and various parts of the

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Speaker 2: US as well. A terrible waste that Well, when we

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Speaker 2: compared a leakage index number, they were just over one,

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Speaker 2: whereas we were two point seven. So twice is better.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So basically we're just not fixing our pipes like

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Speaker 1: they do in Europe.

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Speaker 2: Yes, we're not investing in the long term where we've

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Speaker 2: got a network of very aging pipes which are leaking

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Speaker 2: and breaking. And that's actually from a public health perspective

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Speaker 2: that's concerned because defects and pipes can increase the risk

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Speaker 2: of disease outbreaks.

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Speaker 1: All right, so we know what we need to do

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Speaker 1: to fix it. But obviously we've gotten a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of reasons why we dined, including funding of our local governments, etc.

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Speaker 1: Is there anything new or brilliant that you have found

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Speaker 1: that might help us?

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Speaker 2: Now you're right that it is really an investment and

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Speaker 2: funding issue. But actually one of the new things was

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Speaker 2: there's been big advances in technology for detecting leaks, various

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Speaker 2: acoustic systems inside pipes and above pipes with GPS monitoring,

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Speaker 2: so we've got the technology to actually identify leaks and

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Speaker 2: that's really been a big improvement. But also water metering.

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Speaker 2: We've got more and more evidence now that water metering

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Speaker 2: is an important part of the solution. It helps detect

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Speaker 2: the leaks and it makes people more conscious off the

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Speaker 2: value of water.

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Speaker 1: All right, Nick, thank you so much for that. Nick Wilson,

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Speaker 1: Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago. During

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Speaker 1: that interview, we probably lost Dart and I let's say,

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Speaker 1: two hundred thousand liters of water as we were talking.

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