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 7 August 1999

 

COUNCIL IN A SQUEEZE ON WATER ARGUMENT
Commentary by Bernard Orsman
Inside Local Politics,

Auckland City’s user-pays flagship, Metrowater, got an umpteenth reprieve this week but no one
could say with any confidence that it would survive the war.

Metrowater has become the number one bogey for the present council, just as Britomart
was for its predecessor. [Britomart is a passenger transport centre planned for Auckland City.]

Councillors are in a bind. They can carry on with the company and face the odium of ratepayers
or scrap it and face a rates rise of 28 per cent as the price of bringing burgeoning wastewater costs
back into general rates.

Councillor Catherine Harland says in an exasperated tone that Metrowater is a rollercoaster
destined to keep running until the next election. Elected representatives are not the only ones struggling
to stay afloat.

Metrowater director Josephine Grierson said this week that it was becoming very hard for staff
and directors to keep running the council-owned water business “with the Damoclean sword hanging
over their heads.”

On Wednesday [4 August], the council had another go at Metrowater by increasing the emphasis
on consumption and committing more money to help the “losers” who, inevitably, come about from
such an exercise.

This time 45,000 ratepayers, many of them poor with large families, will have to find up to a further
$500 a year for water.

Little wonder the Water Pressure Group is attracting growing numbers of people intent on civil disobedience
and not paying their water bills.

Group spokesman Jim Gladwin had a chilling message for councillors on Wednesday:
“The Water Pressure Group is here to stay for as long as Metrowater exists.”

The group organised 14,000 pro-forma submissions during the annual plan process calling for Metrowater
to be abolished, but it was 470 submissions from other ratepayers which underlines a wider groundswell
against the company.

Auckland mayor Christine Fletcher is frustrated at how Metrowater was set up although she has always
supported retaining the company as long as social equity issues are addressed.

She is staking her reputation on the tariff changes – which will see 75,000 of Auckland City’s 120,000
households benefit by up to $200 a year – meeting public concerns.

“If I am right and the tariff review goes some way to alleviate the inequities now in the system,
a lot of people will feel better about Metrowater.”

Like Britomart, opposition forces are on the rise.  But unlike the last council, which had the numbers for Britomart,
this council is finely balanced on Metrowater.

And that, in the words of pro-Metrowater councillor David Hay, will allow the political football to be
kicked around for a long time yet.