New water plan ‘unfair’ — farmer
Call for exemption in rules for small water suppliers
I can see the need for such suppliers to have a concise plan
and monitoring procedure so all the people involved know what is happening.
AHawke’s Bay farmer fears a new Water Services Bill targeting municipal suppliers could also increase the costs of using a bore to provide drinking water for her and her neighbours.
But Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta, whose ministry is overseeing the water reforms, says farmers are unlikely to have to pay anywhere near the cost of municipal suppliers.
Rhea Dasent, a policy adviser for Federated Farmers, is one of three households living on a family farm in Maraekakaho who are supplied water by her father.
“We have a groundwater bore that supplies my parents’ home, the cottage I live in with my husband and two young children, and the cottage his oldest brother lives in with his family.”
This same water supply also provides water to all the animal troughs on their 190-hectare beef cattle farm.
Water is pumped from a 15-metre deep bore shaft and sent to a concrete reservoir where it is then distributed.
In the 100-plus years the family had been on the farm, and the 20 years the bore had been in use, there had never been any illness from bacterial contamination, she said.
This kind of set-up was common across Hawke’s Bay, she said.
Under the proposed Bill, her father will have to register as a water supplier, develop a water safety plan, set up a consumer complaints scheme, test water quality and potentially have to add chlorine or fluoride. Dasent agreed it was important to ensure better potable water and accountability by large and municipal water supplies, especially after the 2016 Havelock North water contamination.
“Large suppliers have multiple workers managing the water, doing shifts, with different roles, creating a chain of responsibility with many links.
“I can see the need for such suppliers to have a concise plan and monitoring procedure so all the people involved know what is happening.”
But to classify people like her father as a water supplier, was “unfair” she said, calling for an exemption for small water suppliers from what she viewed as “unnecessary regulatory burden”.
Rhea Dasent, policy adviser for
Federated Farmers
Mahuta said there was no proposal to treat farmers who supply neighbours with drinking water in the same way as municipal suppliers such as Hastings District Council. She said Taumata Arowai, the new water services regulator, would be required to consider the scale, complexity and degree of risk of the supply.
“This means that farmers sharing water with two or three neighbours should be able to have mechanisms, such as ‘point of entry’ UV filters, that are simple, costeffective and provide confidence to the supplier and the user of their drinking water safety.”
She added small water suppliers would have several years to adjust to the new arrangement and she was considering extending these timeframes to ensure those affected had necessary support and guidance.