Water Services Entities Amendment Bill
Many of you will have followed with interest progress the Water Service Entities (WSE) Amendment Bill which had its first reading in the house on 22 June 2023 and was referred to the Governance and Administration Select Committee with submissions closing on 5 July 2023. Hurunui District Council has continued to advocate for ratepayers through the select committee process and last week the CEO and I further addressed the issues as we view it from a district perspective.
The Select Committee consisted of chair Ian McKelvie a former Mayor of Manawatu and member of the National Party, one other National member, two Labour party members and one from the Greens. We had ten minutes to address the committee followed by questions from the committee.
The timing is tight as the house rises at the end of August, but it appears the Bill will be passed along with the RMA Bill before this time, these are two pieces of significant legislation with equally significant impacts through communities.
In essence the WSE Bill creates 10 entities, currently proposing Canterbury and the West Coast will form one entity but, given the central government election in October is less than 100 days away, the question needs to be asked should the reform be rushed or are the changes to the legislation superficial and will do nothing to change the concerns of taking the community assets with no compensation or address effective removal of control and influence of communities.
A much wiser approach would be to leverage cross party support for an enduring solution that works for all, that will ensure our communities have a real say in the planning and delivery of critical infrastructure and reduce the likelihood for planning decisions to be made by a distant body.
Another issue that we believe remain unresolved through the Bill is the allocation of the management of stormwater given that the draft legislation provides that WSE’s will be responsible for urban stormwater, but not for rural, nor urban stormwater that is situated in the roading corridor. Given that some stormwater systems traverse both rural and urban areas and our case like many others the same system may cross rural and urban boundaries on multiple occasions. We have continued to raise the anomaly as there may be a tendency to waste resources determining who is responsible for which activities.