Down at the festival Rosie said they came to the festival every year and made time for the Blessing of the Boats and the Tangata Manu Birdman Beach Party.
The Beach Party had avoided cancellation but had been relocated to Shorland Park and moved to Friday, February 13.
She said it was a shame the events had been affected by the wastewater discharge.
“It doesn’t feel like the normal Island Bay festival.”
Sam said she was very disappointed Blessing of the Boats had been cancelled. She said it was what many people came to the festival for.
“It’s a big Catholic community so I think it’s really important for them to see that and obviously the Italian side.”
Kate said the real disappointment was Wellington’s infrastructure.
“This is not the first time we’ve had sewerage going into the sea,” she said. “We’ve just got to stop making these mistakes.”
She had brought her stepson and his partner who were visiting from overseas to support the local event and they had enjoyed the variety of street food available.
Leanne said the kids were “bummed” they couldn’t go swimming and the sewage situation needed to get sorted.
Anika hoped not being able to go in the ocean wouldn’t deter people from coming to the festival, but she said what was going on in the ocean was really sad.
“I’ve talked to quite a few people who are really grieving what this means for the creatures that live here for the marine life, for the diversity that we have, that has taken so long to protect,” she said.
For many the water events however weren’t why they came to the festival.
“We live locally, so it’s nice to come down and support and come check it out,” said Dave.
William said he and his family lived just up the street and came down to the festival for something to do.
He said with a young baby they wouldn’t have gone to the beach anyway.
Lin from Christchurch and Jan from Melbourne saw the festival advertised and decided to come along.
The pair had come for a pickleball tournament, which they ended up pulling out of because of injuries.
Lin said the pair had seen some signs about the wastewater, but it hadn’t impacted their trip at all.
“We’ve just been having an amazing time because Wellington weather’s been great and we’ve just been doing a lot of sightseeing,” said Jan.
Newest water samples show wastewater had not reached inner harbour
Wellington Water says the latest results show there is no indication that untreated wastewater has reached the inner harbour.
The latest water quality tests taken on Friday show wastewater is still discharging into the ocean and people should stay off south coast beaches.
But it shows there is no sign the polluted wastewater has reached Eastbourne, Petone the CBD or Kilbirnie.
Some areas where there had been higher readings also looked to be lower than in previous days.
Wellington Water chair Nick Leggett said today’s results were positive news, but for now the advice is still to stay out of the water.
“What we will be doing is building up a pattern and a trend from the testing in the days ahead,” he said.
“By the end of the week we might be in a better position to sort of say with some confidence and provide some clarity, whether or not that can change.”
Leggett said the clean-up of the Moa Point plant would also continue over the next week.
“Our hope is that by this time next week, we will have a much cleaner plant which will allow the assessments to start taking place so we can understand what it’s going to take to rehabilitate the plant and get it back operating.”
People get in touch with marine life at the Bait House
While people weren’t able to dip a toe in the seawater at Island Bay, also open during the festival was the Marine Education Centre Bait House.
Visitors were told as they entered that the facility had stopped its seawater intake the night before the wastewater spillage because of the predicted heavy rain.
“All our marine life is healthy and happy,” the Marine Education Centre said on its Facebook page earlier this week.
“We dodged a bullet. Many years of operating a tiny aquarium on the South Coast and being in tune with nature as much as possible paid off.”
One of the biggest attractions of the bait house is its touch pool where people could pick up starfish and other critters, and while people were given the option to ditch the hands-on experience if they were concerned about the water, most were still quick to dive in despite the water issues nearby.
– RNZ