Endangered species like skinks and eels are sometimes found around our construction sites. Our environmental team checks the area, then if needed we relocate at-risk native animals to a safe and healthy spot. We catch them, keep them safe and then invite children from nearby schools to help us release them into a new habitat so they can learn about conservation through action.

Norwood Reserve in Mt Albert hides an ecological gem. It’s home to a lava rock forest – a type of native forest that forms on lava flows in the centuries after an eruption. These rare forests now cover less than half a per cent of their pre-European extent, and Norwood Reserve is one of the few in Auckland.

Meola Creek sits at the edge of the lava rock forest, and our work on the Central Interceptor project offered a great opportunity to help improve the health of the waterway and forest. This led to working with local community groups including St Luke’s Environmental Protection Society and the Albert Eden local board to develop the Waitītiko Meola Creek Enhancement Plan in 2018.

During our work we’re removing rubbish and weeds to control plants and animal pests in the forest. When the pest plants are cleared, it’ll make room for native trees and shrubs so the forest can regenerate. The plan describes the various improvement activities we’ll undertake in local green areas adjacent to Meola Creek to help improve the health of this important local stream.

Read the Meola Creek Enhancement plan

Some of our sites are near parks and waterways, which gives us an opportunity to work with the community on clean ups and planting.

Our Lyon Avenue site is partly located within the Roy Clements Treeway on Mt Albert Grammar School grounds, and we’ve worked with the school on environmental projects including two busy planting days.

In another project, we helped the school’s Enviro Club collect seedlings to grow within the construction site. A lot of vegetation was cleared for the work site, so this was an opportunity for students to salvage some self-seeded plants and re-pot them. While the team did the mahi, they heard from Roy Clements about the early days of the Treeway.

Some of our other sites border Whau Creek in Blockhouse Bay. To leave our working environment better than we found it, we held a work party to help clean up the banks of the creek.

We were lucky to discover 3.5-million-year-old fossils in the Kaawa sand dug up at our Māngere site, which raised the interest of Auckland Museum. We’ve now entered a partnership with both Auckland Museum and mana whenua to collect and house taonga discovered during the project.

The museum plans to educate the public about the taonga, both from scientific and cultural points of view. Two paleontologists have come to sift through the stockpile of shell and sand. We’ve made their task easier by splitting the stockpile, providing a loader and a sorting screen normally used in a quarry.

 The museum has collected more than 100 specimens of shell, from small cockle shells to larger oyster and mollusk shells. Some of these shells had never been seen in any Auckland excavations. We’ve also found a whale vertebra, along with various-sized logs and wood fragments, which are thought to be kauri.

Construction uses a lot of water, and we’re constantly looking for ways to be more efficient. Our latest initiative is the Māngere Recycled Water Plant. This is a small water reuse plant consisting of two treatment streams. The first stream treats sewage effluent to the standard needed in construction. We aim to produce 500,000 litres per day for use above ground and in the main Central Interceptor tunnel.

Producing recycled water for construction use has two major benefits: it reduces both the volume of treated effluent being discharged into the Manukau Harbour and reduces reliance on Auckland’s main water supply network.

The second treatment stream is a small trial plant to produce treated water for drinking. Our aim is 30,000 litres per day of potable drinking water for testing and analysis. This plant is a first for New Zealand and showcases our aim to be leaders in efficient water use.

We’re sponsoring Grow Space in Morningside to help make their urban market garden possible, with a greenhouse, watering system and raised garden beds. Migrant and refugee women are now using the space to develop gardening and business skills. They’re focusing on sustainability and using organic horticulture techniques and have started delivering fresh produce to restaurants in the local area.

We’re making our transport greener and quieter with three new electric tipper trucks thanks to $500,000 in funding from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. They’re believed to be the first electric on-road tipper trucks with battery-swapping capability in New Zealand. We’re using them to move excavated rubble and dirt from Central Interceptor shafts and tunnels to refill the old Puketutu Island quarry site in Māngere.

 The e-trucks run on 2800kg batteries with a 200km range. Each battery takes only 5-10 minutes to replace – nearly the same amount of time as refueling a diesel truck. They’ll transport more than 66,000 tonnes of spoil from Central Interceptor sites throughout the project.

E-trucks produce 79 per cent less carbon than diesel trucks, which will reduce our project emissions by more than 300 tonnes in total – the equivalent of powering 400 homes for a year. 

We’re committed to recruiting more Māori and Pasifika students who can grow into future business leaders by creating the Ara Tātaki Engineering Pathway Scholarship. This is a partnership between the Watercare Central Interceptor Project and the University of Auckland Faculty of Engineering that gives the recipient funding, mentorship and work opportunities.

The first scholarship was awarded to Marihi Hōhepa Te Huia, who has iwi affiliation with Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngātiwai. Marihi showed resilience gained through life experience and a deep connection to his culture, community and environment, all qualities we believe will propel him forward as he begins his career in engineering.

Dirty PPE should be washed in a commercial facility to reduce the risk of spreading harmful substances through the home. With the scale of the Central Interceptor project, we identified the need for a new laundromat and entered a partnership with mana whenua hapū, Te Ahiwaru.

Named Te Whare Manaaki, the laundromat opened for business in November 2021. It launders between 100 and 500 PPE sets a day from our sites. For the marae, this is an opportunity to run a new business and offer work to those who would be otherwise unemployed.

We’re supporting the 26 schools and kindergartens along the Central Interceptor route through education programmes. We partner on waterway clean-ups, show students what the project is all about, help them be safe around trucks and work sites, and support community and cultural projects.

One of the local schools created artwork about family activities near streams, lakes and the ocean, and we’ll use these on signs around our sites.

We’ve also teamed up with social enterprise Make Give Live by purchasing 200 distinctive, bright pairs of slippers to keep the kids at May Road School warm.

In 2020 we launched the Dig Deep Programme, a weekly two-hour workshop for seven to ten of our staff, running over 20 weeks. The programme builds confidence with important life skills such as English reading and writing, managing money, learning to use technology, and understanding health and safety. The course can also be used to gain a range of qualifications to further their careers.

Three of the graduates earned a Dogman, a key role in construction, responsible for rigging crane loads and safe crane operations.