I’m not sure how or why the NZ economy manages to get water management so completely wrong, all the time. How is it that Australia, Britain, Japan, I dunno – everywhere else in the world – can have decent water management, and yet we cannot? It is not like we are short of water! Surely we have more water than just about any other country!
It started off a couple of years back with the incredibly stupid campaign for Three Waters – bad videos, incompetent propaganda and a totally incomprehensible business model – and now with the equally dislikable and equally bad and somehow different yet still exactly the same clusterfuck that is Tiaki Wai. Started out bad, still getting worse, run by invisible idiots who don’t talk or appear in public, with an insistence on installing water meters everywhere, including to properties that simply do not need them.
Case in point today on Wellington Scoop, where an article quoted a granny who has an apartment as well as a basement garage. The apartment uses water, the carpark does not. But guess what? Yep – she gets two separate water bills, despite the garage neither using water, nor making / disposing of water, no sewer, no rain water pipes, no fresh water in, not hot water, zero H2O in any way. Yet still gets a bill. That pisses me off, so I wrote in the comments:
“Will Peet ! How about making your first real move on the water front a good one? Why not simply front foot this unfolding disaster, by seizing the bull by the horns, and saying quickly and publicly:
“If a property has no water coming in or going out, then we will simply cancel that water bill, completely.”
That would gain you huge political goodwill, and save you a whole mass of the deeply irritating advertising campaign, and would clear up a whole pile of bad issues right from day one. So then you can simply say to Ceridwyn Roberts and her basement car park bill – Don’t pay it, we will cancel this. As there is no water going in, or going out, there can never be a water meter there, nor any need for one, and so just scrap the account. Completely, totally, and immediately. Do it now.“
I don’t understand why we can’t get better Chief Executives of companies – someone who has some sense of how to manage public expectations first off. Will Peet is apparently the (current/former?) head of Site Safe and “has been an independent director on the board since 2021. A civil engineer, he’s been involved in construction through the rail and defence industries and has worked overseas from America to Afghanistan to Antarctica to Aitutaki. Based in Wellington, Will works as an independent director and advisor and is a member and chair of several major project governance groups.” I’ve got a lot of time for engineers, they are some of the nicest and most competent people out there – almost as good as architects, but, you know, not nearly… but Tiaki Wai – you need to step up and handle things !
Some people are getting really het up about this, understandably so, as the projected increases are horrific! I’ve no idea if the following numbers are true or not, but this is an example from somewhere on the interwebs, forecasting over the next decade:
The whole debacle started with the decision to send out water invoices weeks before the new rates ones. The Council is now belatedly trying to run the argument that the bulk of the water charges will be offset by a decrease in rates. If that is true they have drowned the good news in a flood of outrage.
Yes – debacle from the word Go.
Re those that have a garage with their apartment, on a different Unit Title – and get a Water Rates bill for something that clearly states : No Water, No Sewerage. And then charges a (admittedly small) amount anyway.
I have questions.
If Tiaki Wai are shifting to Water Meters, seeing as the “property” has no water, therefore no need for a water meter?
Will they stick in a water meter anyway?
I hope not and presume not.
Therefore, should those people in that situation commence with civil unrest and simply refuse to pay?
The Reason she’s getting a bill for the carpark is a hangover from the way the council’s lumped big chunks of their water infrastructure costs into their rates systems,
For Drinking and Wastwater its pretty attributable but she’ll be getting pinged for stormwater costs that were just averaged across all rating units…
(and TBH Storm water was something that should have remained with councils rather than any water company.).
Eg. WCC are in charge of managing Trelisseck park and the kaiwharawhara stream down ngaio gorge, but as soon as the water disappears into a big pipe to go around where there used to be a big oil tank its Taiaki Wai,, but when it pops out again to go under a bridge over the Hutt Road its WCC again…
great comment from an Allan over on Scoop:
“There is Tiaki Wai advertising all over the place especially all over the internet, saying “your bill is on the way” for “safe, reliable and sustainable” water services.
This is obviously costing millions, which is part of our bills.
Why does a monopoly need to advertise?
And what’s up with the “sustainable” bit?
It feels like they are just taking the piss, rubbing salt into the wound. No one wanted or voted to have Tiaki Wai created, didn’t need to rebrand Wellington Water and rub it in our faces at our expense.”
Exactly right Allan, exactly right…
https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=182217#comment-1861670
Wellington has a problem with water. Water is taken from the Hutt River, pumped into storage lakes thence into the reticulation network whence it emerges from the taps of the citizenry.
There seems to be a problem that the Wellington reticulation network leaks like a sieve. This is because the reticulation network is, in large part, old, and because it has taken a heavy though invisible battering from the earthquakes of the 2010s.
There are also severe and ongoing issues with the region’s wastewater networks and processing, with depressingly regular failures and overflows – from Moa Point to Seaview to Titahi Bay.
Stormwater issues are widespread and recur regularly across the region.
The response to this operational failure has been the traditional New Zealand response to any operational problem – to reorganize and restructure governance and administration while leaving the operational component of the organization untouched.
It’s like a disease. . .
There is a GREAT online visualisation tool that spells out the total rates increase (with breakdowns) in a fabulously simple way.
http://www.tiakiwhy.nz
=)
Why couldn’t the councils (WCC and GeeDub) and the new entity have coordinated something like this as a communication tool?? Too simple? Not expensive enough?
It’s as if the dominant line of thinking has the worst of both worlds: Gliding On meets corporate greed.
In Britain, Thames Water was privatised years ago, and is now teetering on bankruptcy. In a last gasp of the Thatcherist ideology behind it, its owners are threatening to sue if a bailout isn’t forthcoming. I say let them go under and be re-nationalised for next to nothing.
I had to and fact check this, Kumara, as I couldn’t quite believe that Thames Water was near bankruptcy – but I should not have doubted you for one second. Yes, bizarrely it is true. Despite having a monopoly over the 8 million residents of London, who can neither buy water elsewhere nor shit in someone else’s pond, Thames Water is going bust.
Why? Same old problem that Tiaki Wai has been put up to here. Saddled with huge debts, alongside sadly lacking infrastructure, and the obviously massive protests when they tried to rark up the water rates, this is a warning to NZ not to go down the same track, as well as a lesson in how to fight your water bill for all Wellingtonians: civil disobedience. Refuse to pay unjust water bills.