Philippa Stevenson: Head to head over who turns the tap

COMMENT

You don't have to be stuck in the middle of the South Island drought - or the Australian one, for that matter - to know that water or lack of it is a maker and breaker.

The nation's and the world's water resource is increasingly recognised as a defining environmental issue.

Owning water rights could one day be the path to riches and power. In some countries, it already is.

The people of Te Kauwhata know all about water as a battleground.

In November, I reported that the Te Kauwhata Community Committee was implacably against the Waikato District Council taking control of its water supply by refusing to renew a management contract with the locally run Whangamarino Water Supply Board.

Mayor Peter Harris said the council was good at managing water supplies, and Te Kauwhata was the odd village out among the district's communities.

Te Kauwhata people believed the council had no regard for local feeling or enterprise, and was hell-bent on uniformity for the sake of it.

To add spice to the row, the council was negotiating an agreement with the Corrections Department to supply water to the planned 650-bed men's prison at nearby Hampton Downs and add its sewage to Te Kauwhata's system.

Community committee chairman Gerald Jackson said locals were in the dark over the talks, and had no idea whether they would be beneficiaries or benefactors when it came to servicing what amounted to an unwanted instant town within their midst.

Earlier, the council over-rode the committee's decision to refuse to let the prison use the town's sewage system, and, as he feared, in December it did the same over the water supply.

Yesterday, council chief executive Warwick Bennett said the council had struck a deal with the Corrections Department and it would be good news for Te Kauwhata residents, who were paying more for their water than any other town in the district.

Sewage treatment would be upgraded at the department's expense to a standard that would meet resource consents up for renewal in 2007.

Wastewater pollution of fragile Lake Waikare would be reduced to an immeasurable amount.

The water supply system would also be upgraded to give it 20 per cent extra capacity and save Te Kauwhata ratepayers an annual average of $200 a property.

None of this washes with some of Te Kauwhata's leading lights.

Jackson said the council paid only lip service to its undertaking of community partnership, and whatever the deal with the department, it could not compensate for selling the soul of the town.

Ross Goodin - chairman from 1982 until December of the water board and the Te Kauwhata Irrigation Association, which owns the water supply headworks in the Waikato River - takes a dim view of past council management and today's promises.

He says the water board was formed because the district council's predecessor, the Waikato County Council, did such a poor job of maintaining and operating the water supply that the system was severely run down and about $300,000 in debt.

The board had done such a good job that it now had a surplus of $200,000. The irrigation association also had good assets and cash in hand.

It was a complicating factor that the council was now the only body mandated to comply with new Health Act drinking water standards, but the association would dispute the council's track record of economical management, Goodin said.

He has more faith in private enterprise when it comes to keeping tight fiscal control.

Last month, the irrigation association unanimously rejected turning over its water supply assets to the council, although it has contracted the council to operate and maintain the system.

From Goodin's corner the council has a "dogma" of control unleavened by lateral thinking.

To Bennett, the council is community focused and runs things in a business-like way.

"We have 325km of water mains around the district. It is big business," Bennett says.

Which is the heart of the matter.

Water is going to be even bigger business in the future. Are councils best suited to manage society's lifeblood?

* Email Philippa Stevenson