Wellington City needs its own Wayne Brown - Richard Prebble

OPINION

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown wrote to Wellington City Council last week expressing his concern about whether the council was willing and able to supply drinking water. No doubt his officials, who are experiencing increasing water restrictions, urged him to write. The minister should have declined to get involved.

The council would have been delighted to get the minister’s letter. Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau wrote back: “Wellingtonians expect central and local government to work together and get on with finding solutions for our water crisis. That is our focus.”

The expectation that central government is the solution is the reason there is a water crisis.

Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell is quoted as saying it will cost a billion dollars a year to fix the Wellington region’s leaking water pipes, and that is unaffordable “unless the Government chips in”.

As a former MP for Wellington Central, I can confirm there is no shortage of rain. Giving the city taxpayers’ money is rewarding reckless behaviour. Even worse, it would enable Wellington to avoid taking the potentially unpopular measure needed to solve the water crisis.

The leaking pipes are just a symptom. The real problem is the demand for a free service is infinite. If water was metered, there would quickly be no water shortage. The water is not just leaking from the public pipes, but also from households with leaks from washers and domestic pipes.

Kāpiti, next door, had repeated summer water restrictions until the council installed meters. Auckland, where if it does not rain for a week, it is a drought, had a water crisis until the city took the tough decision to install water meters. The supply of water is one of the few infrastructure amenities in Auckland that does work. Watercare, with a secure income stream, has funded extensive capital works to ensure the availability of water.

As an aside, Mainfreight installs water tanks to hold and use the water from the roofs of its depots to wash its trucks, flush the toilets and water its gardens, which has demonstrated Auckland has plenty of water.

When Auckland had its water shortage, no civil servant thought Wellington should take any action. Wellington thought it was a local issue and Auckland’s elected officials should fix it.

I live in a poor rural community. I can confirm water meters turn you into a water conservationist. Every year, I do the test. I completely turn off my water supply for four hours and see if my water meter has moved. If it ticks over, we search for the leak and fix it.

An overflowing culvert at the shore of Lake Rotoma. Photo / Andrew Warner

Lake Rotoma is also an example of how government subsidies can have unintended consequences. In our case, it has indirectly resulted in significant waste and rate increases.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council, concerned about the nitrification of Rotorua’s lakes, issued a dictation that all lakeside communities must install a sewage system. Only Lake Rotoma does not have a nitrification issue. For geographic reasons, the area around the lake will never have more than 430 households and 12 farms. The council was not willing to alter its dictation.

Rotorua’s response was to call a local meeting and say, ‘We must agree to a local sewage system to qualify for a central government subsidy’. The subsidy, we were told, would bring the cost down to less than $4000 per household.

I have been a director of an engineering company that has installed sewage systems. I went home and did my own calculations. My back-of-the-envelope calculation was the scheme would cost more than $18,000 per household.

I wrote to the council pointing out that the sewage plant is just a scaled-up septic tank. If an order were placed for 400 state-of-the-art domestic septic tanks, it would cost around $14,000 per household. No pumping or ongoing maintenance costs to the ratepayer.

The reply I eventually received made me realise officials had no appreciation of the potential cost blowout. The only way to stop the scheme would be to run for mayor. Politics has already cost me two marriages. I was not willing to risk a third. The council is strangely silent on what the scheme has cost. I believe it is more than $23,000 per household.

Without the intervention of the central government subsidy, the council would have made much more sensible decisions.

The people of Wellington have voted for a mayor endorsed by the Green Party. In a democracy, that is their right.

My advice to Simeon Brown is to respect democracy. When Wellingtonians have had enough of continuous water shortages, they will vote for their own Wayne Brown to fix the problem.

Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.