Waikato councillors disagree over water meters

Monday, 2 March 2020

Waikato Councillors hold strong, but opposing views on installing water meters for the purpose of conserving water.

The topic of water meters in Hamilton city has flowed into public debate again.

A recent informal chat between Waikato councillors has triggered opposing views about the issue.

And an advisor for Water New Zealand has weighed in on the issue, saying without meters people are 'blind' to water usage.

A question was asked about water meters in Hamilton City at a meet-and-greet between Hamilton City Council and Waikato Regional Council.

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Water meters were a a vexed issue in the 2016 local body elections in Hamilton and sparked rigorous debate.

The current council would not be bringing them back in any time soon, West Ward councillor Dave Macpherson said.

Macpherson told Stuff he thought installing meters was 'coercive' measure.

Meters are a 'knee-jerk reaction' to the water conservation issue, Macpherson said.

Hamilton City Councillor Dave Macpherson said installing water meters in households across the city was a 'punitive' measure.

'Do you punish people, or do you educate and involve them in understanding the issue?'

Installing water meters at households across the city would hit lower income residents hard, Macpherson said.

'If you've got a bigger, older house with more people in it, it might be crowded, you're going to end up paying much more for water than a house that is modern, energy efficient and which tends to be owned by wealthier people.'

But he agreed the council could look at other ways to conserve water, such as making mandatory rainwater collection part of new housing in the city.

'If the Regional Council want to cause big unnecessary arguments about water meters be my guest, but I think there are smarter, more effective things we could do to conserve water,' Macpherson said.

Waikato Regional Waipā-King Country councillor Stuart Kneebone said there was no argument over meters - he was simply enquiring about the issue in an informal chat, he said.

But he did think meters were 'an effective tool for encouraging sustainable water use'.

He was surprised at how much political opposition there was to measuring water usage, when that same logic didn't apply to electricity metering.

'It's also a mechanism to more fairly apportion the costs proportional to how much water an individual uses.'

'For example, an elderly couple or a single person living in a house is clearly only using a fifth of the water that a five or six person family is, so it makes sense to me that the single person shouldn't be paying as much.'

No metering means councils have to average the cost amongst each household, regardless of individual household use, Kneebone said.

Water New Zealand Technical Advisor Noel Roberts said the debate about meters was a contentious one.

People don't like the idea of paying another service bill, Roberts said.

They may end up paying more than through their rates, Roberts said, although that depended on where they lived and investment in infrastructure required.

'A number of councils, Tauranga and Kapiti, for instance, had quite a high impact when they put water meters in. In Tauranga there was about a 25 per cent decrease in water usage.'

'I like meters for the fact that it does provide transparency, because at the moment, people don't know how much they use, and if you can't measure and you can't improve or do anything with it, you're totally blind.

Water is not an infinite resource, Roberts said, although people like to think it is.

'New Zealanders use a lot more water compared to other countries and we also export a lot of water it takes a lot of water to create milk products, for meat and for forestry. We are seen as the clean, green country, pure with big flowing rivers, but that's not the reality anymore.'

Waipā District Council started billing water meters in July 2018, a spokesperson for the council said an average household's water bill was $100 per quarter.