Kerre Woodham: Our waters are in an absolute mess

What an absolute mess our waters are in.  

Drinking water regulator Taumata Arowai has put 27 councils on notice to have a plan and funds locked in to fix their drinking water supplies by June of next year. I was actually surprised that so many councils still have issues with their drinking water. Still haven't put in barriers to protect against the cryptosporidium and guardia that can be spread through drinking water supplies, especially given the Campylobacter outbreak in Hastings in August 2016.  

More than 5000 people were violently ill and the outbreak has been linked to three deaths. So I would have thought that any Council that didn't have treatment in place would have made it a priority to get those barriers put in to prevent their people getting contaminated, getting sick from contaminated drinking water.  

But no, here we are in 2023, with a cryptosporidium outbreak in Queenstown.  

Since 2016, we've also had issues with drinking water in east Otago, although that was lead contamination not Protozoa which is the all-encompassing name for the bugs. We've had issues with wastewater run off again in Queenstown. The Council sought permission in 2018 for untreated wastewater, sewage basically, to continue being pumped into the lakes and rivers in Queenstown for the next 35 years. Those beautiful pristine lakes getting pumped full of literal crap.  

We've got issues in Wellington with wastewater going into the harbour. We've got people in Inner city Auckland being issued drinking water and dealing with sewage bubble ups as engineers try to fix a huge sinkhole in Parnell. There are other examples.  

There is an absolute urgent need to overhaul and upgrade our three water systems, hence what the Labour Government was trying to do with its Three Waters. But they made an absolute hash of it. So Taumata Arowai has put the councils yet to do the necessary work on notice.  Queenstown Mayor Glyn Lewers was on Early Edition this morning. He believes water regulator Taumata Arowai is undermining the very industry they're trying to regulate, and the costs will be passed on to ratepayers. 

The bit that concerns me is I think the regulators are probably undermining the industry they're trying to regulate, that's the fear I've got. So what's going to happen is they're all competing against each other now against the scarce resource, and that's the industry resource and also the supply resource. So you can just imagine the consultancy rates and the supply rates are only going go one way and it's up. It just gets passed straight on the ratepayers, so ratepayers can expect a fair increase in rates, I'd suggest. 

Yeah again, I don't quite follow the reasoning. So Queenstown knows they haven't had a barrier to protect the drinking water for years. They know they've got problems with their wastewater pumping out into the lakes. The other 26 councils presumably know that they have no treatment in place to protect their drinking water. The Campylobacter outbreak in Hastings was in August 2016, so here we are seven years later and now all of a sudden saying, oh man, we're going to have to really scramble for resource.  

Well, if you'd pulled your finger out and got the job done and prioritised it, you wouldn't all be competing at the same time, would you? So it's no good pointing the didgeridoo at Taumata Arowai and saying, oh, now you're forced us into this position and now we're going to have to compete for a scarce resource. There wouldn't be a scarce resource if you had used the seven intervening years between when there'd been a Campylobacter outbreak that made so many people so very, very ill to do something.  

Seven years later what have you been doing? You leave it till you run the risk of prosecution. You find yourself competing with the same consultants, the same equipment. 

The price goes up. That's on you. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.