Wellington City Council contractor Downer uses 'magic' dowsing rods to find pipes

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Divining rods are being used to find important infrastructure in Wellington on the ratepayer-funded clock.

Downer Group said the practice was one tool used to find underground water supplies while on contract to Wellington City Council and the firm had defended dowsing as being 'used quite widely'. 

'Farmers and the waste industry also use this practice to locate underground water sources,' Gary Sue, Regional Manager of Wellington Transport Services at Downer wrote in an email to NZ Skeptics Chair Craig Shearer.

'It's not fool-proof but I am told it does work.'

**READ MORE:

* Council boss uses divining to find pipes and cables, while skeptics pour cold water on it

* Water meters make you think about water

* Ask A Scientist: Is there a scientific basis for water divining?

* Water meters suggested as Wellington faces water shortage**

Dowsing rods, also known as 'divining rods', are normal copper rods, but when a person moves them over water the 'diviner' feels vibrations in their arms.

For believers in the practice, electromagnetic current generated by water under the ground causes the vibrations.

But to scientists and skeptics holders of the rods might as well use coathangers to find water.

A Downer employee was spotted using dowsing to find a pipe on the streets of central Wellington in January, Shearer said. The spot was then marked with spray paint. 

'It just makes the company look silly and promotes the belief in magic things.

'It's kind of like how the hell would this work? I guess the dowsers feel that they are somehow in tune with the earth. It's just magical thinking.'

Louis Houlbrooke of the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union said the practice was 'absurd'. 

'Having contractors dig up pavement on the basis of vibrating sticks risks significant waste of ratepayer resources.'

However Wellington City Council spokeswoman Vic Barton-Chapple said 'there is no additional cost to the customer' for the service.

'Downer has told us they do not have a specific policy on the use of dowsing.

'They do not actively promote this practice however, from time to time, their teams may use this practice if it is safe, there is no additional cost to the customer and when used in conjunction with technology and service plans.'

Shearer said the practice's success could be explained a similar way to ouija boards. 

'The Downer employee has probably got years of experience of knowing roughly underground where pipes are running and so they're using their intuition and past experience, even just subconsciously, to say 'oh yeah that's where the pipe is'.'

Dr Alison Campbell, a senior lecturer at the faculty of science and engineering at the University of Waikato, said there was no scientific evidence the practice was more useful than random chance.

'I would hope that engineering firms were a little bit more science-based in what they were doing.'

But Wellington City Council contractors aren't the only ones using dowsing rods.

Last year a Stuff article showed it was being used in Carterton and a council operations manager there was training his staff to use it.

And the chief executive of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Larry Marshall, is on record as saying divining worked 80 per cent of the time but he had 'no idea how they do it'.

Shearer said he was not surprised to hear belief in the practice was still widespread. 'Humans are very good at fooling themselves.'