Porirua City Council wants water meters, big rates increases to fund pipes investment

Monday, 29 March 2021

The Porirua City Council is proposing a massive investment in infrastructure which it hopes will deal the ongoing sewerage issues in Tītahi Bay.

The Porirua City Council wants to increase rates by 8 percent a year for the next three years so it can invest in critically-needed infrastructure, joining other local authorities in the region looking to reverse years of chronic underinvestment.

The council is also considering installing water meters to encourage conservation and selling social housing to help fund the investment in pipes. The ideas are among those in the council’s draft Long Term Plan, which is out for consultation until the end of April.

Mayor Anita Baker said she expected some ratepayers “will be shocked” by the proposed increase but said the council had no other option.

“We have to fix our infrastructure, I think people know that is a big problem,” she said. “We have been asked to fix it so now people need to tell us what they think.”

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Porirua, which has only 19,000 ratepayers, is one of the most socio-economically polarised areas in the country, incorporating both the affluent Aotea and more challenged suburbs like Cannon’s Creek.

But with the population expected to grow by 30,000 – or about 50 percent – by 2051 and creaking infrastructure already resulting in regular sewage overflows into Tītahi Bay, the council has to act, Baker said.

The council’s latest draft Long Term Plan proposed spending $800m over the next 30 years on pipes and $323m on roading. Even with this huge proposed investment in pipes, the council will fund only half the amount of investment recommended by Wellington Water.

Baker said funding the entire amount was “simply unaffordable” and the city did not the resources to fund all the work required.

It also had few options for funding the investment. About two-thirds of the council’s income comes from rates, so the council had little choice but to increase rates to pay for the work, Baker said.

The council would also fund investment through debt, planning to almost triple the amount of money it borrowed in the next decade, from $131m now to $370m by 2031.

Other measures proposed to offset the rates increase included selling council social housing, charging for parking in the central city, reducing the hours at Te Rauparaha Arena and not paying contractors the Living Wage.

The council also wanted to bring down water usage from its current level of 323 litres per day per household. The plan proposed installing water meters from 2025 onwards, at a total cost of $24m.

“This will help us identify where leaks are so they can be fixed,” the plan said. “It will also provide residents with a way to monitor and reduce their water usage. Without the information from water meters we won’t know if we are improving.”

Baker said she “personally” favoured water meters as the only way to reduce usage, but she acknowledged it would be controversial in the Porirua community.

Much of Porirua’s infrastructure has reached the end of its life, with the wastewater system in the worst shape.

The council plans to initially deal with the problem by building storage tanks costing $120m. Nearly a quarter of the drinking water pipes in the city were also in “poor” condition, the draft Long Term Plan said.

Baker said that it was now up to ratepayers to decide what the priorities were. The council is accepting public submissions until April 27.

Porirua is far from alone in facing challenges in upgrading neglected infrastructure.

The Department of Internal Affairs estimates that the cost of fixing New Zealand’s beleaguered water systems could amount to $110 billion over the next 30 to 40 years, well more than double what is currently planned. Without urgent reform, the department estimates household water costs could almost double in cities and treble in rural areas.