There's good news for Auckland beachgoers, with a rāhui being lifted from the Waitematā Harbour meaning it's safe to go swimming again.
Large parts of the harbour were off limits for recreational activities after a main sewer line collapsed on 28 September creating a massive sinkhole. This resulted in millions of litres of sewage overflowing and pouring into the harbour.
Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei held a karakia at Ōkahu Bay on Thursday morning, lifting the rāhui, meaning activities such as fishing and swimming can now resume.
The collective patience of the community was acknowledged, along with the respect for observing the rāhui.
Watercare environmental care manager Dr Nathaniel Wilson confirmed to AM on Thursday morning any beaches that have a green flag next to them on SafeSwim's website mean they are fine to swim in again.
SafeSwim's website shows the majority of Auckland's beaches are listed with a green flag except for beaches in Point England, Te Tinana, Judges Bay, Masefield Beach, Sentinel Road Beach, Home Bay and Herne Bay, which Dr Wilson put down to "local network issues".
AM previously talked to Marine ecologist Professor Simon Thrush who recommended "giving it a week" after the overflow stops before people go swimming again.
When asked about this and when the last overflow was, Dr Wilson told the show there hadn't been any dry weather overflows since October 26.
"The volume started dropping from a week before that when we put those pumps in, it just took a while to get the levels down," he said.
"We've been doing exhaustive testing across those beaches, in collaboration with Auckland Council and we're really confident in the numbers. So what you see on SafeSwim is absolutely the best scientific data."
Dr Wilson confirmed there have been wet weather overflows but only at old parts of the network.
"The black pins you'll see at the moment are the result of wet weather overflows, but those are wet weather overflows from really old parts of the network. They're parts of the network that were designed to take stormwater into them 100 years ago before we had good treatment and those are areas that we are working on in a big long-term plan to fix those areas," he said.
"But it does mean when it rains, those beaches are always going to flicker a wee bit. We've had two big rain events since and we've been tracking them and the issues have mostly been inside that rāhui area anyway. But now that they're off, we are keeping a close eye on it and we'll keep the exhaustive testing going for another week or two."
Dr Wilson couldn't give an exact figure of how much sewage went into the harbour but confirmed "it was a lot" but added it could've been much worse.
"It peaked at 600-700-800 litres per second when it was really, really peaking. We did get lucky though, I say lucky in the worst circumstances, but the solid material stayed in the pipe," he said.
"So what was overflowing was the liquids off the top, just because the flows were a bit slow in the pipe because of the blockage. It did mean you didn't get that physical debris on the beaches like we were really worried about at the start... we didn't see the wet wipes or the personal care products or anything like that, bits of toilet paper that you'd expect in a normal overflow, which was really good for the harbour. We were just really fortunate."
Watch the full interview with Dr Nathaniel Wilson in the video above.
