Council to consult on three water service delivery options soon
Published on 05 December 2024
Preference to collaborate with neighbouring councils
In early 2025, we’ll be asking the Palmerston North community to share their thoughts on how our city’s water services should be managed in the future.
Council met today in an Extraordinary Council session to consider the options for our city. Elected members voted to seek public feedback on options which would see us partner with other councils to create a council-controlled organisation for future water services.
A lot of work has been done to help assess options
Mayor Grant Smith says over the past few years, both Council staff and elected members have spent a lot of time working on what our future water management could look like under different government proposals and advocating for our community throughout those different processes.
“Since the change in government, we’ve been working closely with other councils in the Horizons boundary area to consider options for our local councils. We’ve considered things from governance, community involvement in decisions, asset planning, future projects, potential water service delivery models and the costs for our community. That work has meant each council now has their own set of options to consider with their own community. Some of them will be different to ours based on what is important for their community.”
In today’s meeting elected members expressed concerns and how uncomfortable they felt about the pace needed to meet the government guidelines. They commented that it isn’t good for our community to not have full detail needed to provide thorough feedback, nor for them to make good decisions in a condensed timeframe for such a significant decision.
We’ll have three options for our community to consider next year
The options are:
- In house business model: This option is essentially what we do now, but it is very unlikely to meet legislative requirements for financial sustainability.
- Our preference: A multi-council owned organisation with Palmerston North, Horowhenua, Manawatū and Kāpiti Coast councils: This option would see the 4 councils collaborate to have a joint independent council-controlled organisation. Working with these 4 councils would give a good level of scale that is likely to improve efficiencies and be cost-effective for communities.
- A multi-council organisation with councils in the Horizons area: This option is the same as option 2 but could see us form with 1 or more other councils from within our regional council boundary (Whanganui, Rangitīkei, Tararua, Manawatū, Horowhenua and Ruapehu). Depending on the councils involved, this option could create efficiencies and improve cost effectiveness for communities based on size and scale.
Our elected members have identified option 2 as the preferred option to take out for consultation. Elected members were keen to send a strong signal to those councils that we think there are increased benefits if we collaborate. That’s because it has scale with 230,000 people & 71,000 water connections, is the most cost-effective, we’re geographically close, our communities of interest are similar, it’s got other urban areas, and includes a number of other values that matter to our community.
Elected members ruled out a fourth option, a single Palmerston North City Council-controlled organisation. That’s because it would not be cost-effective for our community and therefore is very unlikely to meet legislative requirements long-term.
Under options 2 and 3 we would transfer the drinking water and wastewater assets to a water services organisation. The council will need to decide what the future strategy for stormwater will be and how this is then considered with the options presented.
We’re planning to consult in late February
The government is releasing its third bill in December. The bill has some crucial information for us to consider before consulting with our community. It includes the requirements for financial sustainability, financing tools, what economic regulation may look like, and the requirements around setting up a council-controlled organisation. We expect to consult with our community from late February. We will have hearings so people can speak to their submission, and then make a decision in June.
We need to have a water services plan lodged with the government by 3 September 2025. That plan will outline how we currently manage our water services and how we plan to do it in the future. The plan will also need to demonstrate that the model will be financially sustainable, record how we engaged with our community on the decision, outline how we will ensure that our water services will be compliant, and our plan for maintaining and upgrading our water infrastructure over time.
Mayor Grant Smith says this will be one of the most important decisions for Palmerston North and it’ll be essential that everyone has their say.
“Over the summer we will be running an education campaign about this project with open days at our wastewater plant, info at our libraries and Customer Service Centre, and we’ll be out and about at events this summer. During consultation you'll have plenty of opportunities to feed into the process and ask questions too.”