Rotorua Three Waters reform: Ratepayers could save thousands

The Government announced changes to its Three Waters reform on Thursday. Photo / Laura Smith

Rotorua households could save nearly $4000 a year by 2054 under the revised “once-in-a-generation” Three Waters plans, the Government claims.

But the city’s mayor, Tania Tapsell, says there’s no evidence of how it would be a fair deal for Rotorua and worries locals will end up footing other district’s bills.

Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty today announced the Government had scrapped a major part of its Three Waters reforms, ditching the four mega entities that would have delivered freshwater, wastewater and stormwater services to households.

These four entities will become 10 under the revamped and renamed Affordable Water Reform, with their boundaries established roughly along the lines of New Zealand’s 16 regional councils.

It means the Bay of Plenty will have its own entity, covering Rotorua Lakes, Kawerau, Ōpōtiki, Tauranga City, Western Bay of Plenty and Whakatāne.

The Three Waters reforms were meant to help local councils deal with the cost of investment in water infrastructure - estimated to be between $130 billion and $185b over the next 30 years.

McAnulty said the changes will deliver big cost savings to households.

“These reforms are absolutely essential. Leaving things as they are will mean unaffordable rate bills.”

Under the new Bay of Plenty entity, Rotorua households would pay $2780 by 2054 instead of $6620 under the current council approach. That was 58 per cent - or $3840 - less for Rotorua ratepayers.

Tauranga ratepayers would have $3350 less to pay, Whakatāne ratepayers would save $8620 and in Ōpōtiki, $9970, representing a 78 per cent reduction.

McAnulty said by extending the number of publicly owned water entities to 10, every council will have a say over their local water services through regional representative groups. A partnership between council representatives and iwi/Māori will be formed to provide strategic oversight.

“These groups will continue to sit below the governance board, in which each member will be appointed on merit and qualification but by increasing the number of entities we will be able to ensure the needs of every community, especially small rural towns, are heard and met.”

He said the proposals would address long-running problems that resulted in rapidly rising rates, poor health and environmental outcomes, deteriorating infrastructure and variation in service quality.

The water services entities will start delivering water services in July 2026. Entities are able to proceed before this if ready.

“These are once-in-a-generation reforms, and it’s important that we get it right.”

But Rotorua mayor Tania Tapsell said the changes did not do enough to address the core issue of councils being limited on investment they can make, or of the community asking for a local voice to be kept in decision-making. She said a better solution would have been for the Government to provide long-term funding to councils.

She believed the council was the best to manage and make decisions over this infrastructure and had been doing so successfully.

“The Rotorua public is right to feel uncertain on how we will be better off when actual evidence has not yet been provided.”

Tapsell said the council had not been given information on who will be representing Rotorua on the regional board or how it could guarantee the district was well represented.

“Apart from promises, there is still no evidence on how it would be a fair deal for Rotorua.

“Calling it Affordable Water Reforms doesn’t make it any easier for a community to pay for.”

She said the Government needed to prove smaller communities would be looked after, and would not see funding drained by large populations like Tauranga.

Tapsell questioned how genuine the projected savings were and said it was “just alternative ways of funding infrastructure in the short term”. She said there would be long-term affordability effects.

“There’s a real risk for places like Rotorua, who are investing well in our water infrastructure, that we’ll be picking up the bill to bring everyone else in a large region up to the same sustainable standard.”

In response to Tapsell’s comments, McAnulty said he engaged with local councils which were invited to a Zoom talk on Thursday morning to go over the decisions.

He said communities would still have influence over water service entities through the representative groups.

“Councils are in control of who they appoint to represent them, in most cases it will probably be the mayor.”

There would continue to be an equal number of mana whenua representatives. He said the role of the regional representative group for each entity was to appoint the board and to set expectations of how the entity is run so it reflected the needs of communities.

”The regional representative group will also monitor and hold the board to account for meeting those expectations.”

McAnulty said the numbers had been “thoroughly fact-checked” and projected costs had been peer-reviewed by both Farrierswier Consulting and Beca, “and make for pretty grim reading”.

”Leaving councils to deal with this themselves will lead to unaffordable rate rises. It would be setting councils up to fail and I can’t in good conscience do that.”

- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air