Southland District Council assets and services manager Matt Russell has been appointed the interim programme director for the Otago/Southland 3 Waters Investigation.

Mr Russell will spend 50% of his full-time equivalent hours working in his existing Southland District Council role.

He will spend the other 50% of his time investigating the 3 Waters reforms on behalf of 10 territorial authorities around Otago and Southland.

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His investigation is the first step in determining the feasibility of a shared service for drinking water, stormwater and wastewater infrastructure and services and how that could be advanced in the wider region.

The project follows a central Government review of how councils manage and deliver water infrastructure services around the country.

The Government set aside $761 million in July to enable reforms.

Of that, $11.15 million has been allocated to the Southland region so that the Southland, Invercargill and Gore district councils, in collaboration with Environment Southland, can begin making decisions about how to progress the reforms.

The Otago region has been allocated $20.4 million, to be shared between the Dunedin, Central Otago, Queenstown Lakes, Waitaki, and Clutha district councils and the Otago Regional Council.

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The Department of Internal Affairs reports in a background paper that the Government has indicated that its starting intention is public multi-regional models for water service delivery, to realise the benefits of scale for communities and reflect neighbouring catchments and communities of interest. 

There is a preference that entities will be in shared ownership of local authorities.  

Design of the proposed new arrangements will be informed by discussion with the local government sector, the paper states. See the paper HERE.

Mr Russell clarified that the 3 Waters reform process is distinct and separate from the process Environment Southland is presently undertaking to develop the Southland Water and Land Plan. 

Regional council water and land plans regulate environmental water quality and set out the consenting processes for developments and activities such as land use intensification, urban discharges, wintering and stock access to waterways.

The 3 Waters reforms are in relation to town supply assets and service delivery.

Mr Russell said the Department of Internal Affairs had proposed “reasonably significant changes’’ to those services.

His role would be to engage with the department on behalf on the Otago and Southland councils about what the reforms might look like.

“Effectively, each of the Otago and Southland territorial authorities have committed to engage with discussion with the DIA . . .and signed a memorandum of understanding to take part in the discussion. It is a non-binding discussion at this stage. It is not saying we commit to reforms. It is saying we commit to take part in the discussion,’’ Mr Russell said.

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The 10 councils had agreed to collaborate on the investigation on what reforms might look like for Otago and Southland, but it was too soon to give any hints about what they might be, he said.

“It is really information gathering at this stage. It is identifying what networks are out there, what age and condition they are in, and what sort of debt levels are associated with them, what sort of value they have, what their compliance levels are like, what their consenting regime is . . . what revenue streams they obtain through rates, and what sort of people and capability resources. So, it is really about understanding the big picture, then making some informed decisions in response to the DIA’s proposed programme of reforms, which will become clearer over the coming months,’’ Mr Russell said.

The department has proposed to table a paper to Government in May 2021, so by April the picture should be much clearer, and hopefully a view on the appetite for reform will have emerged, Mr Russell said.

The most significant reform would be removing assets from local government authority into a larger regional entity.

“That will have a very significant impact on each territorial authority. 

“The 3 Waters networks represent a very significant aspect of asset and management for every territorial authority, so removing that would be a big job. 

“It would be the biggest reforms since the 1989 reforms where there were 850-off different entities aggregated into about 86,” Mr Russell said.

Pulling all the information together would be daunting.  

“Very much so, but it is also very interesting. I will be calling on additional resources to assist in compiling the relevant information. They will come from each of the territorial authorities and also from the professional services industry. We have a request for proposal out in the market at the moment to engage some professional services to assist,’’ Mr Russell said.

His assistants would be paid from the money allocated to Southland and Otago councils from the Government’s stimulus funding.