Nature Calls remains a major project. It's included in all our options

Our long-term resource consents for treating and discharging wastewater (all the water that goes down a drain inside your home and business) will be expiring in the next few years. Legally we need to apply for new consents for the future treatment and discharge of wastewater.

Projects of this scale only come up every few decades, and when they do, they’re expensive.

People sometimes think this project is occurring because we’re doing something wrong, or we haven’t taken good care of our city’s wastewater. That’s not the case. Our consents are expiring soon, which means it’s affecting us now. But every community has resource consents for their wastewater treatment and discharge, and when it’s their turn to renew consents they will also face large costs.

Did you know that across New Zealand, 70% of wastewater treatment plants need to be reconsented in the next decade? Fifteen per cent are still operating despite their consents already being expired.

Other communities are anticipating large projects for drinking water. This is where more people paying for water helps because we can all help each other.

During our long-term plan consultation, our community told us that the cost we’d projected for Nature Calls was too much. Our elected members agreed and asked staff to take another look at the options for treatment and discharge in the future to see if there are more affordable options. We’re doing that now.

The proposed cost in our long-term plan is $480 million, excluding inflation. This will be externally financed through the IFF Act. The costs are still high level, and you can be assured that we have affordability in mind as we continue to look at potential options over the coming year.

We’re also awaiting new government guidance on wastewater standards. The Department of Internal Affairs has stated this will bring costs down. We’ll be keeping you updated as we continue to work on this, and we will get more feedback from you before we consider any changes to our currently proposed option.

The audit of our long-term plan identified a concern about what would happen if we didn’t get external finance, and the impact this could have on other council services. You can be assured we take this seriously. We understand the risk and we’re having conversations with external financiers to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Nature Calls is included in all the options we’re consulting on

When you read about all the options, you can be assured that the cost of Nature Calls is included. In fact, all water projects councils have in their long-term plans are included in the costings, as all of them could move to another organisation if we proceed with Option 1 or 2.

While Nature Calls is a big project for Palmerston North, in the future other councils will also have big projects that will need to be funded. These projects will all be part of the work of any future joint water organisation if we proceed with Option 1 or 2. This would be able to happen more easily in Option 1 and 2 due to scale and combined ability to increase borrowing limits.