Quake-damaged pipes in Wellington are leaking around 1 million litres of water every day. 

The system has been in this state since the November 14 Kaikoura earthquake, but authorities have no idea where the quake-damaged pipes are in the network.

Authorities will continue to carry out detection programmes to find the leaks, Wellington Water's latest outlook report states.

Councillor Iona Pannett said metres will be installed throughout the city to try to narrow down where the leaks are.

She's confident the wasted water will be treated as a pressing matter.

“I expect it to be given some priority because we need to be showing leadership in this area,” she told Newstalk ZB.

“And it is difficult to tell people to conserve water if we are not making vigorous efforts to do the same.”

However, it is believed the process to find the leaks could take months.

“Unfortunately it does take a while to get those [metres] in and then hopefully we can stem the tide,” Pannett said.

“Because obviously over a year that is a significant amount of water.”

The report also revealed 7 million litres of water was being lost daily immediately after the earthquake.

The majority of that was from broken pipes at CentrePort.