No hurry for meters

New Plymouth District Council’s (NPDC) David Langford wrote a rambling article in the Saturday, March 13 Daily News indicating that water meters could save New Plymouth millions.

He stated that we have a rundown water network that is more than 100 years old in places and literally bursting.

Further on he states that if we cut our water use by 25 per cent we could cut the cost for new pipes over the next 30 years by $121 million. Obviously water meters will not fix a rundown network. The deceptive wording here is ‘‘over the next 30 years’’.

For sure it has nothing to do with bursting pipes and a rundown network. If the district population continues to increase over the next 30 years we may need a new Water Treatment Plant (WTP).

Other town councils that have implemented water meters in their networks have justified the cost benefit of metering based on deferring capital costs on new WTPs.

I believe consumer water metering will reduce water consumption, but there is no hurry and we have higher priorities.

So let us see a proper cost benefit analysis for water metering, Mr Langford, before we are asked to agree on implementation.

I would also note that the current NPDC WTP is typically working at less than half of its design capacity. The raw water supply to the WTP from the Waiwhakaiho River is more than adequate for nine months of the year and would also meet future demands over the same period. The main issue is that there is no storage at Lake Mangamahoe during the three-month summer period. We have lived with low river flows during summer for many years and the river has never let us down.

However, future demands for water will eventually outstrip the summer river flow capacity. This could easily happen much sooner than 30 years’ time. This is where NPDC should be spending the ratepayer $18m earmarked for water metering. Alan Rogers, New Plymouth