Mayor eyes water metering

To save Wellington’s collapsing pipe network, Wellington Mayor Andy Foster will seek to introduce water-metering charges for all residents.

As part of a sweeping series of reforms, a mayoral taskforce report found the Wellington City Council should transfer ownership of its $3.86 billion of pipes to Wellington Water, which would independently charge residents for water.

Removing pipes from the council’s books would mean rates could be slashed by as much as a third, though whether that would mean savings for ratepayers would depend on the level of metering charges.

It would give Wellington a similar system to Auckland’s Watercare authority, which Foster called the ‘‘most advanced water system in the country’’.

Under the Wellington region’s current system, residents pay for water through rates. Each council owns its own pipes and pays Wellington Water to operate and maintain the network.

The Mayoral Taskforce on the Three Waters was launched in February after a series of increasingly serious pipe collapses sent millions of litres of sewage into the harbour, closed roads, and required ‘‘turd taxis’’ to truck sludge through Owhiro Bay for months.

Transformational change was needed in all parts of water management in order to future-proof the city, Foster said. ‘‘Tinkering around the edges is not going to do it.’’

The extensive report painted a dire picture of Wellington’s pipes as ageing, broken, underfunded, and chronically neglected.

City councillor Fleur Fitzsimons labelled it a ‘‘warts-and-all

‘‘Tinkering around the edges is not going to do it.’’

Mayor Andy Foster

report about the woeful state of Wellington’s water’’.

Wellington City owns 2653 kilometres of pipes, much of which are in poor or unknown condition. The city has recorded a total of 2096 sewage spills in the past 12 months, despite setting a target of no more than 100 spills.

Only a third of wastewater pipes had been inspected in the last 15 years, and 30 per cent of those had structural cracks, poor joints, or other serious defects.

As much as 30 per cent of all drinking water in Wellington is lost before it reaches the tap due to a huge number of unidentified leaks in the pipe network.

Population growth would put even greater pressure on the pipes and could lead to drought-like water shortages in summer. Metering was needed to give people an incentive to use less water, and to help identify leaks, the report found.

It also said the council had suffered from an ‘‘out of sight, out of mind’’ mentality, which led to an underfunded, breaking, and poorly understood pipes network.

The council had been setting aside money to keep up with the required repairs but had consistently diverted as much as half of that funding to other projects.

‘‘Effectively, we’ve been underfunding water for 150 years, ever

since the first pipes went into the ground,’’ Foster said.

Political pressure to keep rates low had led to a culture where Wellington Water tried to prioritise crucial repairs within a given budget, rather than setting the budget based on the amount of work needed.

Transferring ownership of the pipes to Wellington Water could prove complex, and may require Wellington’s other councils to all take the same step.

The report largely echoes the ongoing water reforms being pushed by the Government, which will take water services out of the hands of councils and create multi-regional water authorities.

The new independent water entity would be able to borrow money against the water assets and set metering rates without political interference.

Several of Wellington’s leftwing councillors have long been sceptical of water metering, concerned that it would disadvantage renters and low-income families.

The taskforce included the mayor, councillors, representatives of Wellington Water, the Chamber of Commerce, iwi and community groups. Its recommendations will be considered by the council on December 16 before going out for public consultation.