Ashburton District Council has decided to join other councils around the country to oppose the Government’s planned Three Waters Reform – we are also suggesting an alternative.

We all agree that there are challenges facing drinking water, wastewater and stormwater and most councils could do better in that space.

But we don’t believe in what the Government has planned. It wants to go ahead with legislation that will compel councils to transfer their Three Waters assets into the ownership and/or operational control of four separate water entities.

Ashburton’s assets would go to an entity covering most of the South Island.

So we are joining a large group of councils in a campaign to make the Government change its mind. The cost of this action will be $15,000 for us, but it will be money well spent as we have deep concerns about the reforms. We know the people who live in this district also have concerns.

The effect of the Government’s decision to mandate the reforms has essentially prevented our community from providing formal feedback to Council and influencing any decision to opt out or not. It is a loss of local democracy.

We have put a number of questions to the Government, as it asked us to do, but we have heard nothing back. We are worried about the financial assumptions and data used by the people who have penned the reforms.

By joining with other councils, we hope to generate enough political pressure on the Government for it to consider altering its decision.

There is a precedent for a reversal – remember the cycle bridge over Auckland harbour?

One possible course of action is an application to the High Court for a declaratory judgement which sets out the ownership of water infrastructure assets and what rights and privileges go with that ownership. Government says councils will still own their Three Waters assets, even though they will be transferred to the new entities and we will have none of the rights you would expect an owner to have.

While Government has set up a Working Group to consider the way accountability, representation and transparency are set up in the new structure, there is no certainty of significant alteration to the reform proposals and Council wants to do all it can in the meantime.

We believe an alternative could be a regulatory framework designed to incentivise change led by asset owners, to meet regulatory outcomes. This is the usual approach in the utilities sector.

A second alternative could be to promote the same approach as we have for roading, which is a local Government/central Government partnership … like the Waka Kotahi NZTA model, where council manages the assets with funding support from the Crown and investment decided on the merits of various business cases.

Watch this space.