Auckland's water crisis was a good thing

Friday, 9 April 2021

Auckland water shortage: Progress on Watercare's new Waikato River plant due to complete in June 2021

OPINION: There is nothing quite like a crisis to spark action, lateral thinking and new ways of doing things.

While Covid-19 has hit some sectors of the economy hard, others have learned to adapt with online ordering or a greater use of e-commerce than might otherwise have happened.

The great Auckland drought of 2020, which prompted unprecedented though low-level restrictions, also triggered some astonishingly obvious improvements in how the city uses precious drinking water.

Some smaller but useful sources were re-commissioned. Creating public awareness that water is not an infinite resource has cut consumption by 13 billion litres without dramatic change.

Watercare's expanded Waikato River treatment plant will process an additional 100 million litres a day from June.

* Auckland in 'slow recovery' from drought following dry summer

* Auckland drought: How just thinking about water made the difference

This followed Auckland's driest-ever six months from November 2019 to April 2020, taking the city’s storage dams, which provide nearly two-thirds of its water, from 90 per cent to 42 per cent.

In response, the Government fast-tracked the process to deal with Auckland’s seven-year-old resource consent application for a significant increase in take from the Waikato River.

Previously there had been no real political engagement over this bid, which had sat in a slow-moving queue of more than 100 applications before the Waikato Regional Council.

A financial scramble found $224 million for a quick boost to the volume taken from the Waikato, and to recommission other sources. By winter, Auckland’s water woes should be history. For a few decades.

Council politicians felt they had been blindsided by their company, Watercare, when the call came to introduction restrictions in May 2020.

An assessment commissioned by Watercare’s directors found no fault with most of its systems and strategies, but said it could have sounded the alarm sooner and worked more closely with politicians.

It noted a wide-ranging water strategy started by the council had not progressed by 2020.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff outlining the need for mandatory water restrictions in May 2020.

However, the work focussed on Watercare and let the politicians off the hook.

The drought of 2020 was no freak incident. The preceding summer, 2018/19, had also been a record dry. In July 2019, I wrote a column exploring whether a new water crisis was looming.

The Upper Nihotupu Dam in Auckland as city water storage hit just 42 per cent in May 2020.

Neither Mayor Phil Goff (who had asked Watercare before responding) nor Watercare itself thought so. It had rained the previous winter and surely would again. Wrong.

Correspondence obtained by Stuff between Watercare and each of the politicians included monthly updates to councillors on the dwindling supply and outlook from July 2019.

Watercare took water from Western Springs lake for commercial users not needing drinking water in May 2020

In August 2019, Watercare drafted a media release pointing out the decline in lake levels.

But in its then-customary style, worded in a reassuring way, it asked Aucklanders only to be “mindful”.

An early draft by Watercare proposed a comment from Goff, including: “Over the coming months, I’d like to see us responding to this challenging dry weather by substantially cutting our water consumption.”

The mayor’s office decided to remove his part from the media release. Goff’s media manager emailed Watercare to say: “We might look at a mayoral release in a month or so depending on how the water supply is looking.”

Optimism had returned by December 2019, despite the decline in dam levels having resumed.

Watercare’s communications manager assured the mayor’s office the company “expects we will be OK”.

“Please note that we are not asking Aucklanders to ‘save’ water, or suggesting there's a shortage,” was the message.

Six months later, Aucklanders faced unprecedented restrictions, and Goff – who in July had opted not to join the calls for restraint – was blaming Watercare for not sounding the alarm.

“We all have a role to play in reducing the volume of water being wasted,” was one of the lines Goff chose to remove from Watercare’s August 2019 media release.

Perhaps getting closer to the edge of a crisis was a good thing.

Councillors overseeing Watercare have learned they need to get more involved, some cost-driven closures of small water sources have been re-activated, and appropriate political focus has been brought to the present and future Waikato River needs.

But most of all, the value of getting Aucklanders on board has been dramatically proven.