Delay a concern to Wellington mayor in Three Waters reset

Thursday, 13 April 2023

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau wants to see a faster transition to the new water entity.

Wellington region’s mayors have backed the Government’s overhaul of the Three Waters reforms, except for Upper Hutt Mayor and long-time critic Wayne Guppy who said it should be renamed ‘the great New Zealand water disaster’.

The reforms, rebranded as “affordable water reforms” by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty on Thursday, will create 10 regional public water entities to take responsibility for fresh, waste, and storm water infrastructures, instead of the originally proposed four.

The deadline to set up the new entities is also pushed back two years from July 2024 to July 2026, but regions that are ready can launch their entities sooner.

Wellington mayor Tory Whanau said she supported the proposition because there would be more local voices retained in the new entities.

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Upper Hutt Mayor Wayne Guppy said the reform should be rebranded as ‘the great New Zealand water disaster’.

The Wellington City Council, alongside other local authorities in the Wellington region – Hutt City, Upper Hutt, Porirua and Kāpiti Coast – will fall under entity “G” with South Wairarapa, Carterton and Masterton councils.

But Whanau also had concerns about how the reform’s two-year delay could affect fixing the city’s problematic pipes and the Long-Term Plan. She said she would work with the Government and other mayors to see if they could speed up transitioning to the new entity.

Lower Hutt Mayor Campbell Barry said the overhaul was politics being put ahead of long-term policy.

“Adding a couple of years does present an issue for Wellington,” Whanau said.

“If we can’t speed up the timeline, I would hope that the Government looks at some sort of compensation because this does put pressure on every council’s Long-Term Plan.

“What will be really important to us is ensuring the Government honour its commitment that our council won’t be any worse off financially.”

Guppy, whose Upper Hutt City Council belongs to anti-Three Waters lobby group Communities 4 Local Democracy (C4LD), said the overhaul was in name only.

Porirua Mayor Anita Baker said the announcement brought more clarity.

“It should be called ‘the great New Zealand water disaster’,” he said. “It just adds another layer of bureaucracy … [there’s] still no voice directly in the running of it from a local point of view.

“When it comes to decision-making, it’s still about two or three layers away from the coalface.”

Kāpiti Coast Mayor Janet Holborow backed delaying the reforms and having 10 water entities instead of four.

Lower Hutt Mayor Campbell Barry said the overhaul was another example of “politics being put ahead of good long-term policy” and delaying the reforms created challenges for councils’ Long-Term Plans.

Shifting to the 10-entity model was not his preferred long-term approach because it won’t have the same long-term affordability as the four-entity model.

'Throughout this process I’ve been incredibly frustrated with how fixing our water infrastructure problems has become a political football,” he said.

“While I personally don’t agree with those concessions, it is what a number of councils across New Zealand have been asking for.

“We now need to take the politics out of this issue and move forward constructively with what’s on the table.”

His Porirua counterpart, Mayor Anita Baker, welcomed the certainty brought by the announcement, although she thought the 10-entity model was not as good as the four-entity model.

The city couldn’t invest fast enough to keep on top of water infrastructure issues, she also said, and the money it “desperately” needed could come from being part of a larger stand-alone entity.

“Our bottom line has always been public ownership, involvement of iwi and affordability for our people. None of this has changed with today’s announcement.”

Kāpiti Coast Mayor Janet Holborow backed the delay and expanding the number of entities.

“A smaller entity will still allow for economies of scale but provide better alignment between regional decision-making and local delivery,” she said.

“Unbolting water services from local government is not as simple as it sounds. Water services are intertwined with other council services such as stormwater systems in our parks and under our roads, and many of our people work across multiple delivery and supporting roles.

“Rushing through such a significant delivery model change wasn’t guaranteed to do this.”

Kāpiti Coast district councillors recently agreed to not fund parts of depreciation costs of its Three Waters infrastructure to cut down rates rises, but Holborow said changes to the reforms would not affect this year’s rates.

Wellington Water’s acting chief executive Tonia Haskell said they would sit down with the six councils that own the authority, and assess the financial and operational impacts of the changes and the extension to the timeline.