From the Other Side: Kaitāia still waiting for resilient water supply - Peter Jackson

Work began on the pipeline from the Sweetwaters bore in 2020, but there’s still no water for Kaitāia coming from it, much to the chagrin of former Age editor Peter Jackson.

OPINION

Like a lot of other people, I’ve been waiting more than a decade for Far North District Council to make good on its promise to provide Kaitāia with a resilient water supply.

“Resilient” means a supply that doesn’t run out during a prolonged dry spell. And while the council has reportedly spent $15 million-plus of our money on addressing that, it seems to be little closer to delivering than it was when this farcical process began.

Last week’s update in the Northland Age (Sweetwater’s sour taste: No water yet from $15m-plus project, December 21) did not inspire confidence. At the risk of sounding cynical, I didn’t believe a word of what the council had to say. It seems that we are being softened up for water restrictions before summer is over, and I give fair warning now, if that happens, Kaitāia will demand, and deserve, a degree of accountability totally foreign to this council.

This town will deserve to know who is at fault, whether it be aquifer experts who aren’t actually experts, the people who sold us equipment that seemingly doesn’t work, council staff who acted beyond their level of competence or councillors who spent millions without knowing what they were buying.

Last week’s story was concerning for a number of reasons, not least that the council now says it still doesn’t know if the water will comply with drinking standards. Why would it spend these millions of dollars on building a pumping station (which was officially completed 18 months ago) and laying a pipe to Kaitāia without first knowing that we would be able to drink the water? Isn’t that the first thing you would establish?

Speaking of pipes, why would the council build this thing at Sweetwater when, according to any number of sources, access to the aquifer is easily available on council-owned land much closer to Kaitāia?

There’s more. The amount of water the bores can pump has yet to be confirmed, and we don’t know what has to be done to the water when it arrives in Kaitāia, or how to do that.

It’s now expected water will start arriving at the treatment plant early next month. Who knows if it will be potable?

The council can’t even say how much the project, originally costed at $2.6m, is now expected to cost, until a senior manager gets back from holiday. Good grief! Only one person knows this?

Asked why this was all taking so long when water was supposed to have started arriving in May last year, the council said “operational commissioning” needed to be “determined and tested”. Does this mean the council doesn’t yet know if it’s going to work? The admission that bores had collapsed, and that there were “issues” with silica in the water, seem to be more likely reasons for the delay.

Council chief executive Guy Holroyd is also quoted as saying Kaitāia would not be “impacted by poor water supplies this summer,” given the council would follow the water management plan to ensure water continued to be supplied.

Eh? So if we get a drought and the river dries up, and the Sweetwater tap can’t be turned on for whatever reason, we’ll be fine as long as we stick to the management plan? What does that mean? Trucking water to emergency tanks on the A&P showgrounds? This assurance is utterly without meaning.

What I’m hearing from inside the council is that the bores don’t work. I’m told the pumps are pumping sand, which stuffs them in very short order. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it seems a more likely explanation for this extraordinary lack of progress than the one we are being given.

And if the council believes the Sweetwater bores will work as we have been assured they will, why the warning that water restrictions might be needed during dry periods to conserve supplies? We have been told, repeatedly and very clearly, that once Sweetwater was up and running, Kaitāia’s summer water woes would be a thing of the past. I even played a small role in a promotional video, made after the formal blessing of the pumping site, praising the council for finally getting the project up and running.

I suppose it’s a bit late now to withdraw my consent for that, but I have a horrible feeling my description of that moment in time as a red-letter day for Kaitāia might have been a little premature.

The only good news in all this is that Kaitāia, and more importantly the catchments that provide it with water, has had a wet Christmas. As yet, there is no sign of the summer drought everyone is predicting, but there is plenty of time yet. Time is one commodity the council doesn’t have.

Perhaps organising a resilient water supply is simply beyond this council, given it can’t even approve the hanging of banners in Kaitāia to announce the advent of Christmas in time to actually hang the wretched things. I will try hard not to puke next time I hear this council is intent on delivering results.

Peter Jackson was editor of the Northland Age for 44 years. He retired in July 2021, but continues to comment on topics and local issues important to him.