Port Moresby's water supply network showing 'signs of imminent failure'
- andrea
- Jun 24
- 3 min read
Excerpted from an article by ABC's PNG correspondent Marian Faa and Theckla Gunga in Port Moresby
A report by the ABC’s Pacific correspondents in Port Moresby, Marian Faa and Theckla Gunga highlights that decades of underinvestment in Port Moresby's water supply system has left it in a ‘fragile state’ with multiple leaks.
Documents seen by the ABC show that the water infrastructure network supplying a major city with almost 1 million residents is facing the possibility of ‘imminent failure’.
The United Nations and international partners are working with the PNG government to address the issues.
A decades-old pipeline supplying water to nearly 1 million people in Papua New Guinea's capital is at risk of collapsing without urgent repairs, threatening to cut off more than half of the city's water supply.
Emergency planning is underway to fix segments of the pipeline and residents are being urged to remain calm.
It is just one part of an Australian-built water infrastructure network that has been operating under ‘extreme’ and ‘unsustainable’ risk, while the nation's state-owned water utility is effectively insolvent, the ABC can reveal.
Port Moresby's population has grown rapidly in recent years, far outstripping the capacity of the city's aging water infrastructure which was built by Australia in the 1960s before Papua New Guinea gained independence. In the 1966 Census of Papua and New Guinea, Port Moresby’s urban population was 43,923 people, expanding to 120,000 people by 1980[1]. The 2024 Census showed a population of 756,754 inhabitants.
Documents seen by the ABC say decades of underinvestment in the water supply system has left it in a ‘fragile state’ with multiple leaks, including one jet of water that has become so ‘powerful’ it has created a sinkhole.
A major failure in the system could create a public health and security emergency in Port Moresby and damage the country's economy, the documents warn.
James Young, CEO of the public water utility Water PNG, said the disruptions caused by emergency repairs to the failing pipeline were unfortunate but necessary.
‘A planned temporary partial shutdown of this pipeline will be required in line with engineering assessments and community consultation,’ he said.
‘Measures will be in place to minimise interruption while the repairs are undertaken.
‘The public and businesses will continue to be informed in the lead-up to and during the repairs.’
Documents seen by the ABC claim Water PNG began warning the PNG government of a water infrastructure crisis more than a year ago.
‘Port Moresby's water supply system is now operating under extreme and unsustainable risk, with multiple critical assets … at or beyond end-of-life,’ said a Water PNG report from November 2025.
‘These critical assets have suffered protracted degradation and are showing signs of imminent failure.’
It warned the city's water system had almost no redundancy or storage buffer and a major failure was likely to rapidly reduce water supply to the city with cascading health, security and economic consequences.
Port Moresby's water infrastructure was laid from the 1940s until the 1960s when Papua New Guinea was under Australian administration.
The gravity-fed system channels raw water from a large dam on the mountainous outskirts of the city to a treatment plant in Port Moresby.
There has been very little maintenance since the infrastructure was built more than 50 years ago.
Steel pipe walls, originally 15 millimetres thick, have worn down to just 2 millimetres in some places, with hundreds of millions of litres of water rushing through them each day.
Among the urgent issues flagged by Water PNG were leaks in the primary raw water pipeline, known as Rouna 1/3, which feeds directly into the Port Moresby treatment plant.
One of the leaks has become so severe it has created a 6-metre-deep sinkhole and a flooded area extending more than 500 metres, one document said.
The leak is worsening and will require emergency repairs to prevent a catastrophic rupture, according to an engineering report seen by the ABC.
In May, a technical diver was sent into the large, swampy sinkhole with zero visibility to assess the leaking pipe, which is submerged under a growing body of water.
The documents say the sinkhole is several metres deep and surrounded by a flooded zone. (ABC News)
They found water was seeping from the pipeline at high pressure.
‘This is a very powerful jet of water … if the water was flowing straight up it would reach a height of around 150 metres,’ Mr Young said in a written statement.
An engineering report confirmed the pipe was in "active failure" and at high risk of a complete rupture if not repaired, with chances rising every month.
Excerpted from the following article:
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