Background to water reforms

Water reforms have been a hot topic for successive governments for close to a decade.

In 2016, the Havelock North water crisis raised concerns about water management in New Zealand and the high costs to communities to ensure all Kiwis had safe drinking water.

Water is going to cost all communities a lot more in the future – regardless of what option we proceed with. That’s due to a range of things, such as:

complying with new standards and legislation, eg, drinking water and wastewater
government policy
mitigation for the impact of climate change
population and industrial growth
replacing or upgrading ageing infrastructure
increasing health requirements.

The previous Labour government proposed four large organisations to manage water across the country. Closer to the general election, that changed to a proposed model of 10 entities. In Palmerston North, that would have seen one water organisation for councils in the Horizons region.

The current coalition government changed the water reforms. It introduced new legislation and called its version Local Water Done Well. It keeps water assets council-owned and lets each council choose the best way to deliver water services for its community. The options under the legislation are bullet points below and in brackets we explain if it is now an option or, if not, why we ruled it out.

Status quo (Option 3)
Council-controlled water organisation (Options 1 and 2 )
Independent consumer trust (this has not been selected as this option would have higher costs for our community than Options 1 and 2)
Single council-controlled organisation (this has not been selected as this option would have higher costs for our community than Options 1 and 2)