LTP 2012-2022 - Introduction - Hurunui District Council

www.hurunui.govt.nz
Key Issues
Introduction
In the draft long term plan, we highlighted a number of issues
that we wanted your view on before we came to a final decision.
We received many submissions on these topics and this section
sets out the decisions we made about each issue. Table 2 at the
end of this section shows how each item will be funded.
Drinking Water Standards
In recent years, the Government has placed strong emphasis
on the quality and availability of drinking water for all New
Zealanders, irrespective of where they live. The standard of
drinking water throughout the country has been variable and
in many places, particularly rural New Zealand, below standard.
New Zealand drinking water standards have been developed and
recently revised, and they require all councils to make significant
advancements to meet these standards.
Most of the drinking water in the Hurunui District fails to meet
the new drinking water standards and currently, eight of our
communities are advised to boil water before they drink it.
The drinking water standards are concerned mainly with three
specific areas: water quality; how we will know our drinking
water is meeting the standards; and what we will do about it if it
doesn’t. There are substantial fines for not complying with the
new legislation – up to $200,000 for an offence and $10,000 for
each day of continued non-compliance for each of our 22 water
supply sources.
In addition, the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Act 2007
requires all drinking water suppliers to have Public Health Risk
Management Plans (PHRMP) in place outlining how to safely
manage drinking water. This is significant because we have a duty
to ensure the drinking water we supply is safe to drink. (The
same applies for all other councils and private suppliers.) In our
district, we have 22 water supply sources and each needs its own
PHRMP to be completed at various times between July 2014 and
July 2016, depending on how each water supply is defined (based
on the number of customers each supply serves).
These requirements are financially challenging. We have no
option but to plan toward compliance, but the cost to do so is
immense. To upgrade our water systems to be fully compliant,
we have estimated that it will cost $14 million in today’s dollars,
and a further $484,000 per year solely to operate the upgraded
schemes. This caused us a great deal of concern and we have
raised the affordability issue for a small, rural council such as
ours to meet these considerable costs with the Ministry of
Health. We have come to a compromise to achieve drinking
water compliance no later than ten years after the final approval
date for each respective PHRMP, which will be between 2024
and 2027. The compromise involves two main phases to manage
the affordability issue.
First Phase
As a minimum, we will provide drinking water to our consumers
that is bacteriologically free and is safe to consume. To do this
we will need to lift all permanent boil water notices on our
current schemes. This will be achieved using improved interim
technologies to our at risk water intakes that will subsequently
meet these desired outcomes.
Therefore the first phase proposes nine new Miox installations
costing $758,000 for the 2012/2013 financial year. The at risk
drinking water intakes are: (1) Ashley Rural; (2) Waiau Rural;
(3) Cheviot – Parnassus; (4) Cheviot – Blythe; (5) Cheviot –
Kaiwara; (6) Hurunui Rural – No.1; (7) Hurunui Rural – Peaks;
(8) Hurunui Rural – Lower Waitohi; and (9) Waipara Township.
The existing MIOX plant serving the targeted Cheviot and Gore
Bay Township community will be moved to the intake to serve
and improve the full water reticulation pipeline.
This capital costs and on-going operational costs involved
is to be met by a special targeted rate for each dwelling that
benefits from the water treatment. It is estimated to cost
affected ratepayers approximately $100 per year to fund both
the operational and capital costs. This will affect an estimated
1,463 dwellings in total. We plan to stage the implementation
of this funding over three years, therefore those ratepayers will
be charged $33 in 2012/13, $66 in 2013/14, and the full $100
in 2014/15. The exception to this special targeted rate is for
the consumers on the Ashley Rural water scheme. The cost of
their Miox installation will be met solely by those properties
connected to that scheme as part of their standard, unit rate.
This is because the majority of the consumers of the Ashley
Rural Water Supply reside outside the Hurunui District and
already have a special rating arrangement in place.
All other district-wide intakes are either safe deep source
water or have not had any e-coli non-compliance over the last
three years, thus perceived as safe at present. These will be
continuously monitored for further improvement if the ‘safestatus’
changes. This approach will unfortunately not eliminate
the issue of temporary boil water notices from time to time,
when tested and triggered e-coli contamination is related to
post-intake drinking-water pipeline breaches, e.g. pipe breaks,
etc.
Second Phase
The second phase involves the upgrading of the water schemes
to full compliance, and will mean the end to the Miox treatments.
The capital cost in today’s money is $14 million, and we plan to
implement this between 2024 and 2027. To manage the cost,
this will be funded through a district wide general rate. This
is different to how we currently fund water supplies, which
is through targeted rates for individual schemes. We do not
believe the targeted method of funding is possible or a fair way of
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