Talking Point: Collaboration is the best way forward, not amalgamation

Pauline Doyle says Three Waters proposal is about the pipes, not about the water. Photo / NZME

OPINION:

Let's test the waters on the Government's current Three Waters proposal.

It's about the pipes. It's not about the water.

In fact, half the pipes carry human waste. Then there are the stormwater pipes.

Generations of Hawke's Bay ratepayers have paid local councils to install the pipe network.

And in return, councils have been given the responsibility for maintaining the thousands of kilometres of pipe network and all the other infrastructure designed to remove raw sewage and make sure every household has safe drinking water.

The Government model for Three Waters is not the only model being discussed by some local councils.

Most people don't know that the Hawke's Bay model for our Three Waters has already been operating for five years.

Hawke's Bay Water Governance Group was set up by Justice Stevens in December 2016 to bring the "warring parties" together and put an end to the regional council's court case again Hastings District Council. Initially called the Safe Drinking Water Group it comprised Hastings District Council, the regional council, and the district health board.

Napier joined this regional group in mid-2017, along with Central HB and Wairoa.

The four local councils have been collaborating ever since to ensure they provide safe drinking water and develop better systems for dealing with sewage and stormwater - our Three Waters.

The Water Inquiry found that loss of institutional knowledge played a major role in the gastro outbreak in 2016.

Collaboration is the best way forward, not amalgamation.

Collaboration ensures councils retain the wealth of institutional knowledge around our Three Waters.

Each council has focused on their own areas of need: connecting Havelock North to bores in Hastings was a high priority.

Guided by the Hawke's Bay Water Governance Group, Napier City Council has carried out a list of projects.

These include closing down three of Napier's bores, upgrading the rest, raising the bore heads where necessary, establishing protection zones around each bore, and buying land for new reservoirs for Napier. Most importantly NCC has carried out a comprehensive leak detection programme to provide crucial data to determine where pipes need replacing. The Coverdale St bore with the "dirty water" issues has been closed, and the first of two new replacement bores will be operational by the end of June.

In 2019 the Department of Internal Affairs saw Hawke's Bay as a potential Three Waters model for other regions.

But in the last year Minister Nanaia Mahuta has warned about huge rates rises if local councils are allowed to stay in charge. Probably influenced by the constant images of waterspouts erupting in Wellington streets, she talks up the need for a massive pipe renewal programme and quotes an estimate of 30 per cent water leakage.

But according to calculations Napier City Council engineers have just done the figure is more like 12.7 per cent, nothing like the 30 per cent the minister keeps quoting. The council's figure is based on results from the leak detection programme for a third of Napier's network. The actual figure for leakage from the council pipes could be even lower if you exclude leaks on private property, data which is available where water meters are installed.

The Dutch use a guideline of 5 per cent leakage maximum. With Napier's pristine artesian water we are halfway there.

Yes, we definitely needed a truly independent national water regulator.

The problem in August 2016 was that Hastings District Council ignored repeated requests by the local water regulator to raise bore heads above ground after the 1998 outbreak in Havelock North. For years the local water regulator [the district health board] had let them get away with it. The rest of us are now paying a high price for that incompetence.

In 2017 Napier copied Hastings and chlorinated our water supply. Coffee-coloured water immediately started flowing from taps in thousands of households, coming from the bore in Coverdale St. Chlorine oxidises with the minerals in our mineral water. But by the end of June the first of two new replacement bores should be up and running.

Now it's time to survey the community.

Guardians of the Aquifer have asked that Napier City Council conduct a survey to test the support for chlorine-free water and to test support for a regional Hawke's Bay Three Waters entity, retaining ownership and managerial control of our water assets and, most importantly, retaining the institutional knowledge.

Like Christchurch, we were aiming for exemption from mandatory chlorination which was promised by Government early on. Napier City Council kept their promise, the Government didn't.

The Hawke's Bay Three Waters model is our best chance of going chlorine free.

• Pauline Doyle is spokesperson for Guardians of the Aquifer.