Council seeks more details before public consultation on water plan
The Tararua District Council is looking at opening up public consultation on the “significant” Three Waters Reform programme. Mayor Tracey Collis said the council has not made a decision on its position on the reform, which proposes to remove responsibility for the provision of water services and infrastructure from councils and place it under four large entities.
“The Three Waters is a significant and a large issue,” she said.
However, there was a lot more information needed before the council could formally open up consultation.
“It isn’t our reform, it’s the Government’s reform,” Collis said.
“There’s a lot of discussion, talks of a referendum, concern in the rural sector around water supply. We’ve got a lot of reform being locked in at the moment, across the RMA, freshwater, carbon zero, climate change.
The council had posted on Facebook as a way of getting the facts out and engaging with the community.
“It’s keeping them informed so that they know what’s happening and being open to their questions as well.”
The council had come under fire recently after both the leak in the impounded supply and the dirty water.
Collis acknowledged that some people were upset by what had happened. She said these were things that could still happen regardless of who was operating, whether it was an entity or council.
“The question that did run through my mind at that is the concern in the community. But people were able to ask those questions and get those answers very, very quickly, because that’s local. I was left thinking how that would work under an entity.”
The communications team would be conducting a review into how the precautionary boil water notice was advised to the public, based on feedback.
“That notice was given very late in the afternoon,” Collis said.
“They put it out on Facebook because obviously that’s the fastest.”
She said the water was still being
It’s keeping them
informed so that they know what’s
happening and being open to their questions as well.
Mayor Tracey Collis
treated and there was no E-coli present, hence the precautionary notice.
The council had taken on board many of the comments from the community.
“I readily acknowledge that we’ve got to be in touch with schools, we’ve got to be in touch with rest homes. There is a list of calls that needs to be made.
“We’ll have a full review of that process but also a bit of education for ourselves as well — the difference between a precautionary boil water notice and a boiled water notice.
“The two are different, and while the team here understands that, any time as a resident you’re asked to boil water you take that very seriously. I understand the concern.”
One of the points of discussion with the reform was how an entity might deal with such an issue.
“The connection locally means those things can happen quite fast. Council is that central point that people come to.”
Collis said that was one of the things people were concerned about.
“One of the big questions we have is ‘where is that local voice?”’ she said. “As a district that is growing, how is
that prioritised? “How do we fare against the bigger towns?
“All our towns go through these water upgrades and renewals, there’s a plan in place. There are only so many staff in those areas that can carry that out and an entity will have those same resourcing challenges.”
Collis said she had ratepayers contacting her with concerns about the governance structure, and for those she was sending the full government paper so it could help people understand what was being asked.
The difference with Tararua was that it was unlike main centres, which had only one wastewater treatment plant and one water treatment plant.
“We’ve got seven. Realistically for what we operate here and the team that we have, I think we do extremely well.”