Bruce Bisset: Defer and (later) be damned

Bruce Bisset. Photo / File

It was inevitable that the inquiry into Havelock North's gastro crisis would result in government recommendations to permanently chlorinate all public water supplies given the finding there had been "widespread systemic failure" to meet safe drinking standards.

In announcing that at least 721,000 New Zealanders were drinking water that was "not demonstrably safe" the commission in effect put a bomb under central government, forcing it to change the regulations.

Because no government can afford to ignore a risk-factor of that size, once it's identified. Chlorination is not, yet, a requirement, but it's the next best (or worst) thing.

Councils now have to be able to prove they have sufficient measures in place to ensure the water they supply is safe, regardless of source – and while there are theoretically other options, adding chlorine is the simplest cheapest method.

So get used to it, folks.

The issue is not so much whether water drawn from aquifers or lakes and rivers is pure enough to drink – though seeping nutrients, runoff effluent, and leaking boreheads make that problematic - but whether it stays that way on its way through the pipes to your place.

All towns and cities have a mixture of pipe work serving citizens' needs. Some of those pipes date back a century or more; this includes a network of iron pipes still in service on Napier's hills.

And in general the older the pipe, the more nooks and crannies there are for bacteria to congregate before flowing out of a tap into your glass.

Chlorination is said to be the most effective way to flush pipes clean.

Certainly it's several magnitudes cheaper than replacing ageing metal or concrete pipe work with the new extruded-plastic version – and even if you do, each connection creates opportunity for nasties to collect and grow.

Which kind of lets Napier off the hook. Because an independent report a couple of years ago suggested the city had underspent its maintenance budget.

Certainly recent events such as stormwater mingling with sewage and polluting Ahuriri estuary, not to mention repeated contamination of the drinking water supply, have reinforced this.

And while Hastings district rapidly moved to commit millions to upgrading its network in the wake of the gastro scandal, the perception is that Napier has taken an "only as we must" approach and lags badly behind.

Not that they're alone; a significant number of councils throughout the country have pegged back infrastructural spend over the past three or more decades in order to hold rates at bay – and in doing so aid councillors' re-election.

The new approach signalled by Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta in a Cabinet paper released this week, to look at all "three waters" – storm, waste and drinking – as a package and probably create a new regulatory body to police tighter controls, could well mean councils will face large bills to upgrade these services whether they want to or not.

Which health-wise is no bad thing, though the impact on rates could be severe.

Another concern with such a revised approach is that exploring "the full range of appropriate institutions, market structures and regulatory arrangements" could lead to arm's-length pan-council water bodies regulating everything in a given region – and in turn to privatisation of these services.

Then we may discover the real cost of deferring "three waters" maintenance. I doubt anyone will like it.