Waikato District says it can’t afford to manage water services

Tuesday, 20 August 2024

Waikato District Council has faced facts that it can’t keep managing its water services on its own.

Waikato District Council can no longer afford to manage water on its own and is turning to other councils for help.

An updated Future Proof plan will see Waikato councils work together to create joint affordable water services.

At a meeting for the council’s performance and strategy committee, staff reported that council is in a “very tenuous position”.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announces that Three Waters will be replaced by the new government's Local Water Done Well scheme, which returns water management to local bodies. (Video first published February 12 2024.)

One cause for this was the national reshuffle of water management for councils, shifting from the Water Services Reform Programme (Three Waters) to Local Water Done Well, staff reported.

“This tenuity arises from the risk of council facing more disestablishment and re-establishment cost in producing a solution for managing our three waters assets in accordance with Local Waters Done Well,” the report said.

“Council and its ratepayers simply cannot afford to fund the cost of three waters infrastructure and the roading investments required to meet compliance requirements (in the case of wastewater discharge) and growth (both three waters and roading).”

Council has already been forming a tighter relationship with its neighbouring councils under the updated joint Future Proof strategy.

Church said she is keen to see the Waikato Region become more borderless, and for Waikato councils work together more.

The updated strategy, which council approved at last week’s meeting, involves ensuring that Waikato region “has affordable, integrated and sustainable infrastructure, including…enabling three waters services and community facilities”.

Mayor Jacqui Church said working with other councils on water infrastructure is something that council has done in the past, but not usually under such a time constraint.

Council must come up with a plan for Local Waters Done Well by mid 2025 to be included in their 2025/2034 long term plan.

“In terms of the staff knowledge of how to do it and what to look for and what the pitfalls are, we've got a lot of knowledge in those areas,” Church said.

“It's just expensive to do this work and analysis. It's money that we don't want to spend on something that we thought was really bedded in.”

Church said Waikato District’s three waters are difficult to manage due to a large amount of water infrastructure against a small ratepayer base.

Stage one of a Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) wastewater treatment plant for Te Kauwhata was unveiled in February this year.

“We have about 34,000 ratepayers overall, but only about half of those, about 14,000 are actually connected to wastewater,” Church said.

“So we've got a huge geographic area, relatively small population, really high growth, and a really small ratepayer base for our waters.

“For example, we've got seven wastewater treatment plants and nine water treatment plants in our district. If I recall correctly, I think that Hamilton might have one of each.

“So it makes a huge difference to the complexities of what we do.”

When Waikato Times spoke to Church in March she said that while she has confidence in her council to handle unexpected changes in water legislation, she was frustrated at the lack of communication from central government on water.

Since then, council has been working to meet with ministers and officials, but Church said there’s still some ambiguity.

“We're a little bit hampered. We kind of need that support around waters,” Church said.

“The government, of course, has said they've got no money, and we understand that.

“We just need a little bit of help along that way to support government with their policies. So that's the conversations we're really trying hard to have with government.”