Clear to see
Goodness me. Our council admits they ‘‘haven’t focused on the core infrastructure because councils have been driven by political imperatives, looking at other issues, keeping rates down’’.
So what about spending huge sums of money on things that residents do not want? There are many of those – people know what they are, the latest being a seminar for councillors to understand the new hydrogen economy. Surely that’s for central government?
And what a surprise it is to learn that there’s only a slim possibility of help from Wellington!
If the council thinks it will not get acclamation unless it proceeds with high-cost projects, I for one would praise them highly if they stuck to what they are supposed to do, which is look after the infrastructure and the residents’ basic needs, and do that properly as a priority. Nothing more, nothing less.
To say, as quoted, ‘‘There is no requirement to undertake a warrant of fitness for your wastewater network or your water network. It’s bizarre’’, is indeed bizarre in itself.
The Local Government Act has as its purpose, to ‘‘provide for democratic and effective local government’’ and to ‘‘enable democratic local decision making and action by and on behalf of communities’’ and also ‘‘to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure’’.
The emphasis is mine. It can’t be any clearer. Paul Catchpole, New Plymouth
You turn the tap on and clean, safe water comes out. You flush the toilet and know it won’t end up in a stream or on the coast. You go to sleep during heavy rain without worrying if your house will be flooded. Then something breaks – you call in the plumber – they poke around, crawl in and under, dig a couple of holes and come back with a look of trepidation. This won’t be cheap.
For those not into the detail there is no need to read on, you get the gist and the bill for our district will be in the hundreds of millions.
This will be my third major infrastructure renovation project, having been involved with Powerco’s $1.3 billion five-year programme of renewal and development and a $400 million electricity project in the South Island also designed to address reliability and safety on an ageing network. In the case of New Plymouth district, we knew we had work to do but the water outage following ex-tropical cyclone Gita in 2018 highlighted the fragility of our infrastructure, and so we responded by investing in an extensive programme of asset inspections to understand the scale of the problem with our public water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure.
How bad is it? The pipes and equipment that make up our networks have been systemically underfunded for well over a decade. These funding decisions ignored an underlying truth that these networks should be monitored and managed in the same way we do with our national vehicle fleet: registered, independently checked annually, certified, warranted safe and fit for purpose, required repairs completed, checked and cleared for operation.
Simple really, but we don’t do it. Councils around New Zealand are all waking up to the same issue. We’ve woken up and started work.
We haven’t finished assessing all the work that needs to be done to ensure our networks are fit for purpose but to help you get your head around the scale of the work required, it will be in the hundreds of millions and it will take us more than a decade to complete. But don’t take my word for it – our plan is to complete the assessment this year and bring in an independent engineering firm to peer review the work of our infrastructure team, to challenge it, test the accuracy of the inspections, the assumptions and the cost estimates and methodology used to develop our plans for remediation. We will present a summary of this information to our community and then look to develop a range of options for how quickly we invest in the infrastructure that our generation will develop to serve future generations of people in Taranaki.
Rates will increase as a result of this work. Rates on water and waste water are targeted only to the users of those services and the reality is that historically they have cost far less than other utilities like power, gas, phone or internet.
One of the reasons for the historic low cost is because we have not been paying for inspections and maintenance for years.
Sorry if this news is a shock. Our commitment is to provide detailed relevant information through the year as this discovery work is completed. It won’t be cheap but these investments will determine the quality of infrastructure that our children and grandchildren have access to. This work will determine whether future generations will be able to rely on turning on their taps and having clean safe water come out. Whether they can flush their toilets and be sure their waste won’t contaminate our rivers, streams and coast, whether they go to sleep during heavy rain and wake up to a flooded home. We expect there will be a level of surprise and disappointment from some in our community and that is understandable.
When the dust settles we simply have to ask ourselves the following questions: How much work needs to be done to bring our networks up to standard? Do we have the people capable of doing the work? How much is it going to cost? How long will it take? What would be the impacts of not doing the work? There was another question we have been asking for some time about whether Central Government would be prepared to help pay but the answer from all parties at present seems to be a clear ‘no way’. These are the conversations we will be having this year along with several others as we work to Build our Lifestyle Capital sustainably.