Wai Worry Minutes 21st July 2025
- NZ Empowered
- Oct 1
- 10 min read
Minutes from the Wai Worry Hui 21st July 2025 - Upper Hutt
Hui Details
Attendees - 21 People.
Apologies -
Koha at the Door - Donations to the Marae for the use of the room.
Maybe say ......seeds/plants for garden, food, money
If we can get a donation as and when people can afford or have available to show our thanks for the use of the room.
Council members in attendance, CEO Swainson, Dep Mayor Swales, Cr Ultra.
Geoff gave an overview of Local Water Done Well.
To bring us all along on the journey of Local Water Done Well.
What was wrong with the water. Short answer. Not a lot.
In 2016/17 there was a major outbreak in Hastings where water got contaminated and unfortunately people lost their lives.
Government of the day decided that the drinking water was not being managed well by councils.
This prompted a review from Government of water and wastewater.
Late 1990’s Wellington City who was renowned for the poor quality of its infrastructure. Successive councils chose not to invest in the water infrastructure.
Eventually they started to break, and the quality of these pipes came into question.
Labour government decided that they would merge into 4 companies to manage water (3 waters). National has now decided that it is better to allow Communities/ councils to decide who they would join up with re water services.
Since 2014 Upper Hutt has been part of Wellington Water. Which currently services 6 councils.
As it has been reported in media it has not performed well and not providing the levels of service at affordable costs.
5 of the 6 councils from Wellington Water have decided to form a company which will own assets, something Wellington Water never did. This will allow addition borrowing.
Government has setup many government departments and agencies to have input into the water plans. As a result a lot of the flexibility and decision making has been taken away by government.
When council consulted on Local Water Done Well in 2025 there was a lengthy document which was basically Hobsons choice - no real choice at all.
The two options were go with the new water entity or stay with the Wellington Water situation we have at present.
Why didn’t Upper Hutt go it alone? Well drinking water comes from Te Marua lakes which is owned and supplied by Greater Wellington Regional Council. Upper Hutt does not have a stand alone water treatment plant to provide good quality drinking/potable water.
Equally Upper Hutt does not have a wastewater plant. Currently waste goes down through pipes to Petone to the Seaview wastewater treatment plant.
Upper Hutt is so dependent on Greater Wellington Regional Council for water and working with Hutt City for wastewater treatment.
As you may have seen the Waste water plant at Seaview has had whole lot of issues and is nearing the end of its life. To replace this would be in the region of $1.5b and there is no way Upper Hutt or Hutt could afford this alone. So, we share this cost and upkeep. 30% for Upper Hutt and 70% for Hutt City. Which s roughly linked to population percentages.
Upper Hutt pays 10-11% of the cost of the water treatment plant to provide clean drinking water.
It would cost around $2-3b costs to upgrade/replace the water and waste systems and with this it is why Upper Hutt weren’t able to go it alone.
This year’s Annual Plan document included information on the options for water services, for Upper Huttand was a snapshot of where we were at that point.
Things have moved on quite quickly and continue to move quickly.
The collective aim of the 5 councils who will be involved is to have the new company up and running by 1 July 2026. Those councils are Upper Hutt, Hutt City, Wellington City, Porirua and Greater Wellington Regional Council.
The new water company will own around $4 billion in assets and have staff resource of 600ish people. Even with Wellington Water as a starting point it is quite a bit undertaking to setup this new Water company.
An inhibiting factor of how and what info can be shared and when is due to different constraints for different councils. Even some councillors at this point are not up to date with where things are at.
It is a concern that with pushing forward with the formation of a company on the 1 July 2026 with major decisions coinciding with the local elections and at a time when elected members are out of action.
The decision to remodel Wellington Water into something better by creating this new entity has been made but many other decisions are still pending.
Council endorsed a key decision 2 weeks ago to push forward with the Water delivery service plan. Which will be the same as the other 4 councils. Due 3rd Sep to Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).
Geoff is named as the person (Council CE in legislation) who will agree to the plan and then put it in front of the council. Geoff isn’t sure what would happen if he said no. Upper Hutt could be ostracised.
The Water Services Delivery Plan will be seen by Geoff and Council on Friday 25th July. It has not been seen by anyone in council yet, but it needs to be ratified by council in early August 2025. (Note – just been advised that the draft Water Services Delivery Plan will not now be released to Councillors until Monday 28 July 2025)
Three key documents will be created as part of the setup of the new entity.
Constitution - Dull and boring legal document you would read. Not a direction setting document. Just how the company will function. Some of this will be available to councillors next week. A document mostly drafted by lawyers for lawyers
Statement of Expectations – Councils will have the opportunity to define the levels of expectations for Upper Hutt
Customer Charter – Some work may occur before the company is setup. Geoff’s view is that the customer charter should be between the company and its customers. Not sure why Council will have an input into this but it maybe a bit of a placeholder until a true charter is created.
Geoff has sympathy for the councillors as they may have 1-2 weeks to talk with community and make a decisions.
One other key document is the Partners Agreement. Councillors haven’t seen or even know about it. Used to be the shareholders agreement. This may be quite contentious between councils. One side you are talking about a partnership between the councils. The other is a shareholder’s agreement where if an owner of the company owns more shares gets more votes around the table.
e.g.
40% assets another council
13% assets Upper Hutt
So if that was the case then the council with 40% would have more votes than Upper Hutt.
Even work happening now Upper Hutt pays a small proportion of the costs and has less say in how it is conducted.
Upper Hutt has gone into this thinking this would be an equal partnership. Others of the five councils may prefer the shareholder approach.
Questions and Answers
Q: Water comes from us to go to them?
A: Technically no one owns the water. Iwi have been involved in all the decisions around the company and partnership. Tangata whenua have strong involvement in the process and decisions which have been made thus far. Māori view is no one owns water.
Q: With decisions that have been made. So could decisions be overturned by new council.
A: Yes, any decision can be overturned by council.
A: Ultimately, we are a price taker – we are not in a position to not participate. If a new council chose to overturn a decision, then we would be on our own and that we cannot afford.
Q: Can we not take a complete redesign. We take a lot of water from the Awa. Can we not redesign as we shouldn’t be using the amount of water we actually use now. We aren’t looking at new tech to use water better?
A: A lot of new builds don’t have enough space to even drain stormwater. Even Septic tanks need ¼ acre or more to even be viable.
Yes, we can collect water off the roof. But depending on where the water collected may not be the best quality water for the intended purpose.
As a price taker – if we don’t participate then we could be charged X times more to have the drinking and wastewater services.
It is difficult with the history of water and how things have gone to change how we provide water. Even patching up Seaview may elongate the usefulness of the site for 20 years.
Sea level rise makes Seaview vulnerable. Discussions are underway about options for waste. Land base or water based systems etc.
Q: Clarity about cost of providing water to us all. Even through our water is pretty pure coming from the sky the water still needs to be treated, and this cost sounds like it is quite expensive. Does the provider have another source to recover costs of treating the water.
A: No
Q: Why have councils/new entity not looked into the recover through levies for commercial water users/polluters. It seems that come 2028 there will be a flat rate for consumers with no inclusion of the polluters. With rates rises and water costs will be causing hardship
A: Government are moving us all to paying for water by the litre. For the first year or 2 your council will be collecting the charges for the water. Council will not be setting the charges, just collecting them.
Meters will take time to setup and install. Once installed, there will be a fixed charge for connection and then a per litre charge. This is where the model is heading.
Should polluters pay? Yes, they should do. Most of the current catchment area it is mostly forest.
Remembering the this all started in Hastings where animal waste contaminated the water and killed people through the water system.
We still have to pay for a water regulator to monitor and approve water quality about $260k per year.
A: Council is also having to pay the setting up the consumer watchdog as well.
Q: Page 73, Item 31 of the Long-Term Plan. Source of info supplied by Wellington Water. 2022/23 the results show 443 litres per person per day. Target of 415 litres per person per day in 10 years. Can we get that changed to 115 litres per person per day?
A: Don’t believe everything you read. Those figures include the water loss from leakage, and the target of 415 litres is due to the expectation that there won’t be much progress in replacing and stopping leaks in the next 10 years.
Q: Will Wellington users costs be higher as the water is further way and requiring more infrastructure?
A: Costs will be different for each council for the first 5 years. Then there will be cost harmonisation. After 5 years there will be a levelling out of costs to even them out to all be the same.
Q: Could we have a secondary system for Grey water usage? Leaver water taps can spike the water back through the pipes as they abruptly turn water on and off. This can cause the pipes to rub against the surrounding rocks/dirt and eventually rupture. There are a lot of things we can do ourselves to save out planet. The water we are treating is going down the dunny.
Meters will not fix leaks. I would suggest the use of pressure reducing valves from 10pm -7am and then we will notice a distinct reduction of usage.
A: If you live on the Kapiti coast you are required to have a split system and there is a capital cost to put these systems into houses especially retrofitting them.
Q: We need change of culture around water. What can councils and individuals do to assist with these huge costs of water?
A: Comes back to land use and what controls you want over it. Kapiti have a range of things you must do. Split systems and each new build has to have a tank to collect rainwater for use as brown water (for flushing, gardens, etc.)
A: When there is 15 units going one section it cuts out the options to have these water saving systems. Government mandated the changes to the building and resource management acts affecting density requirements so council doesn’t have a lot of choice on the conditions around the new building regulations.
Go to DIA website there are templates on the formats of the documents. Familiarise yourself with these so that conversation can be fruitful.
More information on Water costs and Action you can take, Submitting to Government.
More Water cost info
Forecasted water costs have been indicated at 3.3% of Median HouseHold Wage in 2034.
Submitting to Government
Here are 2 examples of submissions to government which if you choose you can use as templates or inspiration for your own submission.
So put pen to paper as the old saying goes. We would recommend sending submissions through to:
Thanks to Geoff, Hellen and Tracey and all who came along.
Karakia to finish the meeting.
What’s Next
Next Evening Hui: Orongomai Marae on the 28th of July at 7-8pm
Please forward any agenda items or questions to weavingtheharakeke@gmail.com at least 5 days before the Hui so we can create the agenda and allow respondents to find info to respond.
Please be aware as the Hui are only one hour in duration, questions may not always be answered on the night but will do our best to follow up.
This Hui is getting through an amazing amount of information and discussion in one hour. The amazing amount of work and effort going into this by attendees is not un-noticed. Thanks to all who is attending, discussing and finding/sharing information.
Any questions, concerns, feedback or you would like more info, please email them to weavingtheharakeke@gmail.com and we will do our best to have them answered.
We also have a Facebook Page which is for the community to discuss these kind of topics openly and respectfully. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1160276101835948
We apologise if there is anything we have missed or not recorded quite correctly.
Minutes are created best we can as a representation of the discussions had at the Hui.
