Whanganui District Councillors still opposed to Three Waters reforms but new bill addresses ‘key concerns’

Whanganui would join Palmerston North City Council and Rangitīkei, Ruapehu, Manawatū, Horowhenua and Tararua district councils in Entity E. Photo / Bevan Conley

Whanganui will join regional neighbours in a new water entity if the Government’s “re-set” legislation gets the green light.

The Whanganui District Council is currently preparing a submission on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, although some elected members have trepidations.

Deputy Mayor Helen Craig told the strategy and policy committee this week the council still was not happy with the Government’s proposal to take “away our local control of Three Waters”.

“We don’t mention that at all in this [draft] submission, we’re basically responding to what the Government has proposed a second time.

“We need to put something in there to still [highlight] our protest.”

Three Waters refers to drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater services.

The original reform model proposed four entities to manage water services but that has now shifted to 10.

Whanganui will form part of Entity E alongside Palmerston North City Council and Rangitīkei, Ruapehu, Manawatū, Horowhenua and Tararua district councils.

If the new bill passes, each territorial authority will have a voice on the regional representative group of its entity, together with an equal number of Mana Whenua representatives.

Mayor Andrew Tripe said the council remained opposed to the Government’s water services plan.

However, amendments did address some of the key concerns raised in previous council submissions, he said.

“The inclusion of community priority statements in the bill also shows the importance of having a local voice and local aspirations.

“That’s something we have advocated strongly for throughout the reform process.”

Community priority statements can be presented to the regional representative groups by any person based in the entity area who has an interest in water bodies within that area.

Whanganui District Councillor Ross Fallen. Photo / Bevan Conley

Councillor Ross Fallen said he was concerned Whanganui could lose specialist staff to the new entity because they would be offered money that was too tempting to reject.

“If we lose key staff, where are we going to replace them from?” he said.

“We already have pressures in local government and we have competition in local government for particular roles.

“The creation of an entity might put unfair burdens on local councils to cope with this.”

Council policy manager Elise Broadbent said that was currently an “unanswerable question” and outside the council’s powers.

“I can reassure you that it is on the programme risk register for the impact of Three Waters.”

Interim Three Waters transition manager Kathryn Stewart was employed by the council in March.

A council spokesperson said Stewart would put a “programme approach” around the council’s work responding to the Three Waters transition policy.

“It has wide-ranging impacts on the organisation and our community.

“Part of that role is to help identify, manage and mitigate all risks that the Three Waters transition might pose.”

Council chief executive David Langford said the original case for change on Three Waters indicated the sector would need an additional 9000 staff members over the next 30 years to deliver billions of dollars in additional investment.

“That’s not just engineering staff but resource consent planners, all those technical staff are going to be in high demand.

“Local government is going to be the obvious and first training ground for these new entities to come and recruit from.

“It’s going to be something we will have to really manage our way through because I don’t think we’ve got any credible mitigations available to us at the moment.”

Broadbent said entities would go live between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2026.

For Entity E that would likely be between 2025 and 2026, she said.

“Officers do view the changes as broadly positive for Whanganui in terms of providing greater representation of our local voice.

“Each council now has a seat at the table.”

Tripe said all councils in the new entity should receive additional transition funding to support the timeframe.

“We don’t want investment in local infrastructure to be delayed unnecessarily.

“The quicker investment can happen in our assets, the lower the costs will be to ratepayers in the long-term.”

Submissions on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill 2023 close at 11.59pm on Wednesday, July 5.

Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.