Waia¯ ri project aid a ‘stake for future’
Western Bay could one day tap into water supplies
The Waia¯ri Water Supply Scheme is unusual in that it is a project being undertaken by a council on land well outside its boundaries. The Tauranga City Council is funding the project in its entirety — but ultimately there will be benefits to the Western Bay of Plenty District Council and its residents.
Western Bay’s utilities manager, Kelvin Hill, says resource consent was granted jointly to the two councils to take water from the Waia¯ri and, of that take, 25 per cent was for Western Bay and 75 per cent for Tauranga City Council.
As yet, however, there are no firm plans to extract the Western Bay’s 25 per cent.
“At the moment Tauranga City Council are funding the whole capital project, so we’ve had no financial input or provided money to TCC for that,” he says.
The scheme is scheduled to be completed towards the end of next year.
“Then, if we needed to take water to supplement our current water supplies, we could ask to tap into that supply,” says Kelvin.
Before that could be done, the required infrastructure would have to be provided to connect to the pipeline under construction to Western Bay’s network, and a reservoir would have to be built.
The two councils would also need to agree the cost of extracting the water.
“So there are some issues to sort out, but in principle there’s something in place. We’ve kept a stake for our future — we’re not sure where that future is in terms of serving the wider area, but it’s there.”
Kelvin says one issue that is of concern could be mitigated because of the scheme.
“If we lose some of our bores for any reason, then we need to have a water supply to supply our community, so this gives us an opportunity to take some of that water, so it’s a long-term gain.”
At present there no firm plans to set the ball rolling to be able to take any water, and it wouldn’t make sense for Western Bay to take water now and have it just sitting there not being used, says Kelvin. “It’s all good stuff at the moment and we haven’t exposed our ratepayers to any cost so far.”