KEY POINTS:
An award-winning sausage maker is sizzling with rage after Manukau City Council's new water company hiked its bill by more than 10,000 per cent.
Leonard's Superior Smallgoods says Manukau Water tried to charge it $245,585 for a year's waste water discharge - an increase of 10,379 per cent on the bill of $2366 it paid before Manukau Water started on July 1, 2006.
"We negotiated with them and got it down to $45,000 but that is only until July 1 when the next annual bill will be $88,825," said company director Richard Kornman.
"That's a lot of money for just transporting our wastewater a kilometre along the Manukau pipe until it enters the Watercare Services pipe taking it to the Mangere treatment plant."
Mr Kornman said the company paid a separate bill to Watercare for carrying the waste on from there and treating it. "Manukau Water cannot justify that sort of charge. We are not getting any more [service] from last July than we were getting before," said fellow director Doug Leonard.
Mr Leonard said the company was in its 19th year and had 80 staff at its East Tamaki premises processing bacon, ham and sausages.
Last year it won gold medals in New Zealand's sausage competition for beef and pork varieties.
"We might have to move out of Manukau because this is a volume-related business with a skinny profit margin," said Mr Leonard.
"We can't increase our prices to the supermarkets and customers."
"We have to compete with companies that don't have these charges so it makes it difficult for us," said Mr Kornman. He said that the company's bill had soared because it was the first year where wastewater was charged for on the basis of usage instead of a rate on land value.
This hit high water users like their company where a lot of water was needed because of production methods and hygiene standards.
"We are looking at changing some systems in the factory to conserve water."
Greenmount-East Tamaki Business Association executive chairman Elspeth Mount said Manukau Water was dealing individually with seven high users of water whose charges had "gone through the roof".
Other businesses which did not generate enough waste water to trigger the volume charge last year paid only the base charge of $950.
For some, however, this was a reduction on their previous charge which was based on the land value of the premises rather than usage.
Mrs Mount said the volume charge was a blunt instrument and she was pleased that Manukau Water was talking about a review which promised to bring charges more in line with actual use of the network.
Last night, Manukau Water said it could not discuss a customer's account. But it said its new charge stopped a small number of businesses producing "particularly obnoxious" waste from being subsidised by others.
Chief executive Raveen Jaduram said businesses paid only the fixed charge unless they were deemed to discharge more than 400cu m. After that they paid $2.38 for each cu m discharged.
The company needed to bring in $48 million for the year to cover wastewater network costs.
Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis confirmed there would be a review this year of the formula used to charge consumers for waste water.
