Extra $2m for Wellington Water will go ‘down the drain’, councillor says

Thursday, 14 December 2023

Despite cautions from staff and concerns about transparency, Wellington City councillors have voted to increase the budget to fix leaks by $2 million.

“We know that many Wellingtonians will be concerned about the potential water shortages heading into summer. This extra funding will help deal with that problem,” said Mayor Tory Whanau.

The proposal was sparked by a comment from Wellington Water about the Wellington City Council’s Long-Term Plan, where the water entity said it would be able to fix more leaks in the current year if there was more funding.

Whanau asked staff to prepare a paper including the funding increase for fixing leaks. The funding increase of $2m would allow Wellington Water to fix 800 more leaks this year.

The problem was, the council have already set rates and developed a budget for the current year, which included a lower level of funding for Wellington Water. The increase will have to be funded through debt.

It would be “highly unusual” for the council to approve additional funding while halfway through developing its next Long-Term Plan, staff cautioned in the paper.

“Careful management is required to remain within the Council’s debt to revenue limits. Debt funding additional operating costs for [Wellington Water] would further reduce the remaining debt capacity.”

Staff were not happy with the reporting capacity of Wellington Water either. While Wellington Water could provide a list of all fixed leaks by address, it could not provide a list of the leaks it planned to target with the extra funding.

Councillor Tim Brown tried to pass a motion to delay the paper, saying it would make “zero difference” whether the funding was approved today because Wellington Water still had $6m in its leaks budget for the year.

“The argument that more money today is going to make a difference to work over the next couple of months is frankly risible,” he said.

His motion failed, but was supported by four councillors who shared his concerns about the transparency of Wellington Water.

Sarah Free said it was “abundantly clear” the council did not have enough information about where its money was going.

John Apanowicz said the vote would make councillors feel good as they headed off on their Christmas holidays, but it was a very reactive decision.

“If you look back, we’ve approved money regularly, but we don’t know where it went. We actually need some credible metrics to analyse where the money is going … We know that it’s going down the drain.”

After a series of funding requests from Wellington Water over the past three years, this latest request would bring funding to 33% above the budget in the Long-Term Plan.

The extra $2m in funding would be broken up into blocks of $1m, with further funding released only once the first $1m was used and a list of where it was used could be provided.

Whanau said the extra funding would help to deal with the problem of water shortages over summer, but would be approved only if Wellington Water provided details about how and where the money was going.

“With 45% of the water in the region - 41% in Wellington City - being lost to leaks we need to fix as many leaks as possible,” she said.

All councillors except Iona Pannett and Tim Brown voted to approve the extra funding.