HDD: The Sea is Where We Went to Cope šā¤ļøāš©¹
On sewage, stewardship, and staying OK in cooked times
MÅrena friends,
Before we get started, let me warn you, I am not in the best of moods.
Itās not just PMS, though that wonāt be helping.
Itās not just because Iām the only NZ queer who didnāt get to bow at the feet of Chappell Roan last week (all because I was stressed and booked flights IN THE WRONG DIRECTION then couldnāt afford the $600 correction).
Itās not even just about the wider world feeling so fucking CoOkED - with the Epstein files just the latest in a long list of depravities weāre expected to accept as fine and normal.
Itās because here on PÅnekeās south coast, the moana we all rely on to recalibrate and ground ourselves ~ and which our wildlife relies on as a PLACE TO LIVE ~ is currently being pumped full of untreated human shit. 70 million tonnes of it per day, to be exact.
Iām not proud to say that my first reaction to the ācatastrophic failureā of the Moa Point Treatment Plant was a kind of entitled anger. Last year was such a rough year, then the Wellington summer was a no-show, and then just when the sun finally made an appearance - all local beaches became off-limits. Possibly for months.
This was certainly the angle of a lot of news stories.
And while that frustration is real, it didnāt take long for me to realise how wildly misplaced it was. Not being able to frolic in the waves is, quite frankly, the least of our concerns.
As my dear friend Hana said in this post:
āThis is about so much more than us not being able to enjoy all the things we get to enjoy at the beach and in the sea. This is about taonga. This is about us failing the world we are very privileged to live in. And at a time when we are reflecting on what it means to be Tangata Tiriti - this carelessness, irresponsibility, this failed stewardship is about us not upholding our side of the relationship.ā
A couple of days ago, I was walking from Houghton Bay home to Island Bay when I spotted a pod of dolphins cruising in. Usually such a joyous sight, I found myself awash with worry. How would they cope with the sewage, wet wipes and sanitary pads in the water? Would the Cook Strait dilute the sewage enough to avoid immediate harm? Would the Taputeranga Marine Reserve be OK? Or would the rehabilitation of that part of the coastline be back to square one? I went home and searched for news stories about the environmental impact of the failure - and found one or two pieces touching on it.
In one, Department of Conservation prinĀcipal marĀine sciĀence advisor Shane Geange said DOC were āextremely concernedā about the leak, saying: āāFrom an ecoĀloĀgical perĀspectĀive, raw sewage and wastewaĀter enterĀing a marĀine envirĀonĀment poses an immeĀdiĀate and severe threat to a wide range of ecoĀloĀgical funcĀtions and speĀcies.ā
Geange said raw sewage carĀried bacĀteria, virĀuses and paraĀsites that could impact sponges, musĀsels and fish that eat particles in the water, as well as our local penguin population.
In an interview with RNZ, senior lecturer in marine biology at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington Dr Christopher Cornwall, said it was depressing and disheartening to see sewage pumping out so close to the marine reserve.
āWe have things like increased numbers and sizes of pÄua, koura, crayfishā¦ a lot of fin fish species, so these willā¦ probably all be impacted.
As to what those impacts are, we're not 100 percent sure; they could range from small immeasurable impacts if this sewage pumping is stopped soon, or they could range to larger ecological impacts such as the mortality of that kelp forest and the abalone that lives in it, the pÄua."
There was no way to mitigate the effects if sewage kept being pumped into the area, he said.
āThe only way that we can actually mitigate this is by making sure that this doesnāt happen in the first place and then secondly I guess we need to use this as an example of why we shouldnāt be pumping our sewage out onto places like the South Coast, like the jewel in Wellingtonās crown as some people have put it recently. So we really need to think about using this as an example of what we shouldnāt be doing for our wastewater management system.ā
While the untreated sewage continues to be released into the Cook Strait, Wellington Water says the untreated wastewater is now being screened - meaning large, inorganic materials like wet wipes, diapers and menstrual pads are being removed. The screened wastewater is also being discharged to the long outfall pipe again - which lies 1.8km offshore.
While DOC continues to work with Greater Wellington Regional Council to figure out how far the sewage has spread, the full toll on our wildlife is still unfolding, largely out of sight, in ways we may not fully grasp for years.
Over the past week, Iāve been struck by how many people I know along the south coast are struggling to feel hopeful - not just about this failure, but about anything at all. Given the current state of things - politically, ecologically, socially - looking after our mental wellbeing already feels like a full-time job, and this is one more blow to the fragile scaffolding holding us up.
For some time now, inspired by the words of US activist and author Joanna Macy, Iāve practised gratitude as an antidote to despair. Rather than staring out to the sea and feeling grief at the way sheās been treated, and fear over where weāre headed, Iāve learned to hone in on acknowledgement. To replace āIām so sorryā with āIām so thankfulā, admiring the way the light bounces off her surface, the cool touch of salt water on skin, the fish and kelp and birds that flit on and below her surface. This practice helps to keep me from spiralling off into inept hopelessness. It strengthens my relationship with my natural surroundings, meaning Iām more likely to fight to protect them.
Based on the advice of other experts, Iāve also learned in times of overwhelm to retract the lens of my experience to my immediate surroundings. Of course, itās important not to look away from atrocities, to engage in activism and speak truth to power. But itās also important to know when itās all getting to be a bit much, so you can retreat to the (hopefully) nurturing arms of your local community.
With the sewage spill at Moa Point, both of these practices have become difficult, if not impossible. How to seek solace in a community thatās reeling? How to offer gratitude to an ocean youāve made sick? When the places that normally hold us through the hard stuff become part of the distress, it doesnāt just take away recreation or beauty. It takes away refuge.
So this week, I found myself looking for fresh guidance - new tools to help when the world feels relentlessly, unapologetically heavy, even if youāre not living through this particular mess.
Which led me to David Farrierās most recent Webworm post āAdvice for Coping with 2026ā (south coasters will have to skip past the slightly triggering image at the top). As it turns out, David has also been finding the world quite overwhelming of late, and has called in trauma and bereavement counsellor Ross Palethorpe for advice on how to cope.
Go and read the whole piece, and subscribe to Webworm if you havenāt already, but the section I found the most reassuring was this:
āIn grief therapy, we talk about what is dryly titled the āDual Process Modelā. In my own practice, I think of grief as a place. A world of its own. Time moves differently here. In grief, the colours are wrong. Like some distant planet, our bodies move and interact with their environment in an unfamiliar way. The air can feel suffocatingly thick, or so thin that no inhale ever seems enough. It can feel hostile, overwhelming, a place where any life is precarious and the greenery, if it exists at all, feels alienā¦
I reflect on this in early 2026, when so many of us are grieving.
Grieving the loss of a future we had hoped would exist but that is being trampled on by billionaires, fossil fuel companies, death squads on suburban streets. Grieving people we know, and those we donāt, who have been killed in landslides, at the side of the road, in overstretched hospitals from preventable diseases.
The sense of loss is compounded by seeing those close enough to the levers of power that they could stop this, any of it... Weāre told over and over again that we must carry on as normal, that everything is fine, that the sirens are a false alarm or a false flag and that all we need to do is ignore it, someone will find the off switch soon, get back to workā¦
This is where intentionality and acknowledgement can help us out of the paralysis. An acceptance of the situation as it is, and also that it is not what we want it to be.
Attending to grief in a time of resistance is action and ritual as much as any private mourning. The grief world is following unmarked cars around St Paul, reading about the Epstein files, attending a vigil, phone banking for progressive candidates, crying at the state of it all. For many of us, our current situation is so far outside our everyday existence that it feels shocking, disorienting, but in order to function the grief must be attended to.
And then, equally important, we must step back into the world where the laundry is waiting. Feeding ourselves, finding comfort in that TV show weāve watched a hundred times, taking the dog for a walk or listening to our kid explain Minecraft for the thousandth time. The everyday is what we spend time in the grief world for. It is connection and nourishment and rest and dumb memes and online arguments over where you store the butter.
We attend to grief so that we have an everyday world that not just persists, but thrives, and becomes a world that is more just and fair.
So if youāre reading this and, like me, have found yourself in that liminal zone between grief and laundry, take a step in either direction. Attend to the grief in a way that is meaningful to you, and then step out into the mundane and attend to the life that makes the grief work necessary.
Accept that, for the foreseeable future, we are dual citizens in a culture that finds the very idea transgressive, and find ways to let go of the idea that we can only exist in one place.ā
I also stumbled upon this video by neuroscientist Dr Rachel Barr, featuring 3 tips for staying sane in this freaky, full-on world. Iāve written out the key points below, for those who donāt want to click through.
Widen your world model. As Dr Barr explains, part of the reason everything feels so heavy right now is that our brains construct reality based on whatās called the availability heuristic - a mental shortcut where we judge the likelihood or frequency of an event based on how easily examples come to mind. This results in an overestimation of risks that are associated with particularly vivid or recent memories, as well as those that are highly publicised. One way to counter this is to seek out balance. Thereās some excellent advice on how to do this in this post by Israa Nasir, titled How to Consume News Without Losing Your Mind.
But the bit Dr Barr hones in on is about ensuring youāre reading the āgoodā news as well as the catastrophic stuff. The lifestyle bits, the arts and culture bits. The bits that feel like they donāt matter - because to our brains, they really do. They remind us that while, yes, we live in a world of violence and horror, there is also goodness, silliness, art, joy and pleasure.āYouāre essentially broadening the evidence that your predictive brain is using, and that lowers the chance that you stay locked into a threat-saturated story about the world.ā
Process the emotions: āHumans have developed a technology for dealing with senselessness and that is art and creation,ā says Barr, āIt doesnāt matter if youāve never made anything in your life. It doesnāt have to be good, and you donāt need to share it with anybody. You just need to engage with the process of making.ā Bonus points here for engaging with existing artworks - going to galleries, the theatre, gigs, and other shows. āIt is time for us to guzzle art!ā
Constrain the scale of your moral responsibility. If you feel helpless, and like thereās nothing you can do to change anything, start small and local. Witnessing yourself engaging in small acts of activism can help to pull yourself out of learned helplessness.
On that note, here are a few accounts to follow, if you want to stay informed about whatās going on with the Moa Point spill, and to be ready to jump aboard and help when the call goes out.
First up, thereās Wellington mayor Andrew Little, who posted this great little update on Saturday, and will hopefully continue with open and transparent comms hereon in.
If not, you can always trust Green MP Tamatha Paul to say what the others are afraid to, as she did in this super accessible breakdown of what went wrong - and who is responsible.
Thereās also my wonderful pal and Greater Wellington Regional Councillor Yadana Saw, who offered this on the nose kÅrero over the weekend, as well as Green MP for Rongotai Julie Anne Genter.
If you know of any other people / accounts to follow, documents to peruse or acts of activism being planned in support of our moana, please leave a comment!
In the meantime, friends, try to keep your chins up.
Take the time you need to process the grief before stepping up to the laundry pile, make some terrible, terrible art, and connect with people and places that nourish you.
With much love and solidarity,
Melody x
