Water: Sense and Sensibility

I write on 3 Water Reform - again unpublished by NZ Herald - as a former Auckland Councillor and Regional Councillor now Mangawhai resident. This post focuses on the idea of co-governance....

After decades of immersion in Auckland’s centralised and old-school water, wastewater and stormwater solutions, I have found Mangawhai’s evolving approach liberating, receptive to new ideas, and locally responsive – characteristics that will be blocked by the Government’s blunt and brutal Three Water reforms.

Auckland’s Watercare is tipped to head one of the four proposed Three Water entities. Inevitably Watercare’s existing culture of centralised engineering, massive electrical energy consumption, and inefficient water use will shape that entity’s priorities – and conflict with the diversity of locally appropriate solutions that have and are emerging.

For example all Mangawhai buildings collect and store rainwater for use, reducing stormwater flows, and while there is a centralised wastewater system for denser urban areas, all of its highly treated wastewater is used to irrigate farm pastures and Council is expanding it to irrigate the golf course, while other decentralised urban conurbations have their own high-tech wastewater systems.

None of these outcomes are behind Three Water reforms which appear to focus on co-governance, central control, and infrastructure investment – all of which can and are being delivered locally already. I accept there are challenges and constraints, but there are other regulatory and funding support options at Government’s disposal to improve those outcomes, and which won’t throw the baby of local innovation out with the bathwater.

The amalgamation of Auckland local government in 2010, merged the different three water management cultures of Waitakere, Manukau, North Shore and Auckland into Watercare, and blocked emerging progressive approaches and local efficiencies. For example comparative bench-marking enabled transparent comparison of how each of these four providers charged for water, maintained water networks against leakage, and rewarded efficient and reduced water consumption at household level. Waitakere City Council led the way rolling out water efficiency measures. North Shore operated its own wastewater system enabling wastewater quality comparison across the region.

When all three water functions are merged under one umbrella the opportunity and drive for innovation and efficiency is lost. Auckland amalgamation and countless overseas water mergers demonstrate that operating costs balloon as large single entities develop systems and tiers of management to address the disparate needs and aspirations of diverse developments.

The Three Water proposals come at a critical time in New Zealand’s development as populations migrate from dense city living to smaller communities in Northland, Central Otago and Hawkes Bay for example, and where the appetite for local control, sustainable approaches and de-centralisation are part of the attraction and character.

The murkiness of the co-governance part of Three Waters is evident in the visibility and consistency of local maori opposition – particularly here in Northland. When water resources are managed locally maori views and interests are incorporated. Local Council structures already provide for co-governance. Three Water reforms threaten the diversity of maori representation, and rock the boat of existing local arrangements which aim to strike a balance and recognise not all maori think the same about local water.

For example, resource consents to take Waikato water for Auckland town supply, were initially resisted by Tainui which expressed strong cultural views against the mixing of waters. But this opposition melted away - at the eleventh hour – when Watercare offered Tainui a piece of historically important land on the banks of the Waikato.

The Three Water reforms are inconsistent with the sort of local governance and management that is required by New Zealand communities and all New Zealanders today.