The Prime Minister has committed to settling the contested boundaries of the four new regional water authorities by the end of September – and that means some big decisions for some of New Zealand’s smallest communities.
Near the north-east tip of the South Island, imposing sandstone cliffs look out over Cook Strait. If Wellington’s politicians were to take some time out of the office for a walk on the capital city’s south coast, and if it’s a fine day, the cliffs are visible across the sea.
Those 200m high cliffs became known to European settlers as the White Bluffs. But to Ngāi Tahu they are Te Parinui o Whiti, Te Taumata O Matahourua, in acknowledgement of the great explorer Kupe.
Ownership of the cliffs was returned to the big South Island iwi in 1998 as part of its landmark Treaty settlement – and they are a landmark in a very real sense. For Ngāi Tahu they mark the northernmost tip of its takiwā, that runs 800km south from there to Rakiura, Stewart Island.
Sitting back behind those cliffs is Vernon Station, a 1500 hectare farm that has acquired its own historic recognition in more recent times; the elegant Vernon Homestead is listed with Heritage NZ. Vernon Station is notable in that it straddles the ridgeline; most of its hills and streams slope away to the north-west towards Blenheim, but some of its streams flow south-east into the Awatere Valley.
Straight as a rule down the ridge-line runs the boundary of the Ngāi Tahu takiwā – a red line on the map that is meaningful to Ngāi Tahu and their smaller Marlborough neighbour Rangitāne, and sometimes disputed. To Pākehā living in Awatere Valley, that line has probably held little significance – until now.
The Government, as part of its big new $120-185 billion Three Waters reforms, plans to expropriate all the drinking water, wastewater and stormwater assets from the country’s 67 city and district councils, and combine them in four big new regional water authorities. In latest political parlance, the assets would remain “locally owned”, but ratepayers, alongside iwi, would have only arms-length governance of the new authorities. They would have no ability to develop their Three Waters assets, nor to claim a dividend. It would be ownership in the loosest possible sense of the word.
The proposed boundaries of the four new authorities are mostly decided; they largely align with existing council boundaries – with this notable exception. At the top of the South Island, the Government and its advisors in the Department of Internal Affairs propose that the boundary of “Entity D”, which swallows up most of the South Island, should match Ngāi Tahu’s takiwā.
“Like other local farmers, we’ve been so busy on the farm after two years of drought, and then these floods, that the water reforms are just another unduly complicated layer of restructuring we have to navigate.”
– Marcus Nurse, Vernon Station
That means severing the 1000 households of Awatere Valley and the rest of eastern Marlborough from the rest of the district, which includes the council seat Blenheim and the infrastructure based there. Across the other side of the South Island’s dividing mountain range, similarly cutting away the southern part of Tasman District.
Or, to look at it another way, restoring the peoples and waters of Ngāi Tahu’s northernmost reaches to the embrace of their marae and their iwi.
Because of course, there’s the rub for locals: for some their local district provides meaningful connection and community; for others it’s the marae. And, rather importantly, the boundaries of the water catchments probably align as well or better with the takiwā than they do with the more arbitrarily imposed boundaries of the territorial authorities.
So for most people in most parts of the country, talk of the Three Waters reforms may have felt somewhat remote – but not here.
Nowhere is the threatened impact of the reforms felt more keenly than in the small towns and rural communities torn between local and regional delivery of their Three Waters infrastructure: on the east coast of Marlborough are little Seddon and Ward and the rich Awatere River catchment; at the southern end of Tasman District are Murchison and the mountainous farmland that surrounds it.
Tasman mayor Tim King has warned his councillors that with the Three Waters infrastructure and the district's southern communities being carved away, their influence on infrastructure and planning will be dramatically reduced. "One does wonder quite how the role of the council and the influence of the community is going to change or going to be maintained through those processes with those different entities,” King told them.
It never rains but it pours
At the Vernon Station between the Wairau and Awatere valleys, the impact of the water run-off is immediate and tangible.
Farm manager Marcus Nurse has been trying to keep the stock safe from another weekend of torrential rain and flooding.
"Like other local farmers, we’ve been so busy on the farm after two years of drought, and then these floods, that the water reforms are just another unduly complicated layer of restructuring we have to navigate," he says.
“If you’re in Marlborough in the South Island, my question is why would someone in Wellington or Christchurch be controlling our water? On the face of it, that doesn’t seem to add any tangible value.
“As farmers and people in the rural community, the amount of unnecessary regulation and anti farmer sentiment from the current Labour Government is a hell of a burden, it’s just one thing after another – and then they throw in the Three Waters reforms.
"Where does it end?"
The Prime Minister's promise
This debate came home to Marlborough when Blenheim hosted the Local Government NZ annual conference this month, coinciding rather uncomfortably with farmers driving their slogan-daubed tractors into the centre of town, and also the first drizzle of the deluge that was to come.
Mayor John Leggett had the platform to welcome the Prime Minister to Marlborough ... and he took advantage of the opportunity.
He told her of his "surprise and concern" at the expectation that they – a longstanding unitary authority that had been successfully managing their natural and physical resources – would combine with neighbouring councils and iwi in the Government's resource management and Three Waters reforms.
"There will be trade-offs and it is inevitable that not everyone will get exactly what they want, but the logic behind this approach is clear.... We understand that you'll all want assurance that communities have a voice in the system and influence over local discussions."
– Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister
Jacinda Ardern stepped to the rostrum of Blenheim's ASB Theatre. The Government intended to continue discussions with local government and iwi around the geographic boundaries of the entities, to ensure the best fit, she replied.
"There will be trade-offs and it is inevitable that not everyone will get exactly what they want, but the logic behind this approach is clear.
"We have landed on four public water providers because it provides the right balance between the economic benefits associated with larger entities, catchment considerations, and the needs and interests of local communities.
"We understand that you'll all want assurance that communities have a voice in the system and influence over local discussions. And I know that working with LGNZ, we all want to get to a position of certainty on all of this by the end of September this year.
"I'm confident that by that time, we will be able to sign off on the boundaries of the four entities, along with other key design principles and with your help, begin the serious work of establishing them."
For the community of Awatere Valley and the range that overlooks their farms, and provides their water, they want assurance their voices are being listened to. By the Prime Minister and her Government, by John Leggett and his council, and by the iwi that were there long before either of them. (Neither Ngāi Tahu nor Rangitāne responded to requests for interviews).
District Council chief executive Mark Wheeler argues local people don't relate to the Ngāi Tahu takiwā boundary. "It's a historical fact really – they relate to their provincial boundaries. But we understand that iwi boundaries are a factor in how they're drawing the lines, so we have had a good open discussion with the Minister, and she is going away to think about it, and to talk to Te Tau Ihu [top of the south] iwi, who also dispute the takiwā boundary with Ngāi Tahu!"
Some of those farmers expressed their frustration and disengagement by attending the rural community's protest in Blenheim. Among them were James Moore and his sheepdogs Pierre, Kevin, Bandit, Michael and Ebony from Kekerengu, down the coast between Ward and Kaikōura.
Moore was one of those who spoke to Newsroom. It wasn't about utes, for these farmers. It wasn't about climate change mitigation. It wasn't about planning reform, resource management reform, or Three Waters reform. It was about a feeling of a growing divide between town and country; that they were being regulated without being consulted.
"The water system was put in by the people, for the people. It was funded by the local farmers, and then some years ago the council took over the running of it. A few years ago we built a $4m water scheme to treat the water – so if we had to give it away to someone else, I'd feel a wee bit cheated."
– Rick Hammond, Seddon farmer
These are communities rooted in both Māori and colonial history, and the clash of those two grand narratives. The names Seddon and Ward recall the two great Liberal premiers who carved up the great sheep runs of the 19th Century to make rural land available to small farmers and their families.
Seddon was established after the Starborough estate was bought in 1899 by the Liberal government led by long-serving Premier Richard Seddon, and subdivided into smaller farms for the closer settlement scheme.
Ward was established six years later when the adjacent Flaxbourne estate was subdivided, and named after Seddon's righthand man Joseph Ward – who would become prime minister soon after "King Dick's" death in office the following year.
Water is important to the established sheep and beef farms. But increasingly, it's also critical to the many vineyards that now cover the Awatere Valley like a patchwork – Vavasour, Yealand Family, Tohu, The Crossings – making distinctive sauvignon blancs that (according to Wine Searcher) have drawn inevitable comparisons with the famous Loire Valley white wines of Sancerre.
The decision about whether Seddon and Murchison pay their water rates to faceless authorities in Wellington or in Christchurch is important mainly because it symbolises the way in which they feel they are being isolated and alienated from the decision-making process. Most are adamant that they don't want to be in either water authority; they want ratepayers to retain ownership and control of their water assets.
And now the local Water Group, which lobbied successfully for a new water treatment plant to be funded and built five years ago, is reconvening.
Down to the river
Awatere Seddon Water Group secretary Liz Cleaver says that in her days driving heavy machinery, she helped rebuild the road across from Blenheim to Seddon; she doesn't intend to see that connection severed now.
"I've got people breathing down my neck, saying to start the water group back up," she says.
"What is wrong with what we have already? Why do we have to spend all this money to fix something that's not broken? It might have been broken in Havelock North, it might have been broken in Wellington, but I think they've learnt now to fix it, and they've learnt where things went wrong."
– Liz Cleaver, Awatere Seddon Water Group
"We're a small community, we're not big, we're not going to fight the Government – but we do need more information to fight the boundaries and the new authorities taking it off our council's hands.
"What is wrong with what we have already? Why do we have to spend all this money to fix something that's not broken? It might have been broken in Havelock North, it might have been broken in Wellington, but I think they've learnt now to fix it, and they've learnt where things went wrong."
Nearby beef and sheep farmer Rick Hammond, a representative on the local water committee advising Marlborough District Council, says he and his parents and grandparents paid for the water infrastructure that runs through their taps and irrigation ditches. His great-grandfather first bought land in the Awatere Valley between the wars, in 1926.
"The water system was put in by the people, for the people. It was funded by the local farmers, and then some years ago the council took over the running of it. A few years ago we built a $4m water scheme to treat the water – so if we had to give it away to someone else, I'd feel a wee bit cheated."
As a big water user, Hammond pays thousands of dollars a year for water; that looks likely to increase more rapidly if Awatere Valley is assigned to the Christchurch-based water authority, as officials propose, than if it stays with Blenheim in the Wellington-based authority. (That decision is expected by late September, as Ardern says).
At present Hammond gets about $438 of water includes with his council rates; the thousands of dollars more above that, the family must pay themselves.
"Wellington or Christchurch, I don't have a preference either way," he says. "But I live here on this big farm. My water bill extends up to four or five grand. So this will make quite a bit of difference, if I have to pay more. That will bother me quite a bit. My last water bill was manageable, coming through the winter, but the next one will be monstrous."
“Farmers, as a group, all want to leave the land that they manage in better shape than when they took it on. We don’t need to be regulated to the nth degree to achieve that."
– Marcus Nurse, Vernon Station
The Department of Internal Affairs has published reports projecting what will happen to water charges, with or without the big mergers. Without the reforms, the average water rates paid by Marlborough households are forecast to rise from $1,380 to $6,560 a year. In Tasman, they are forecast to rise from $2,290 to $6,760 a year.
But with the mergers, the Department maintains the average water rates can be constrained to $1,260 a year in a water authority taking in Marlborough, Tasman, Nelson and the lower North Island. The rest of the South Island is projected to pay $1,640 a year to its (almost inevitably Christchurch-based) water authority.
So, as well as community loyalties, the decision about where the residents of Seddon and Murchison pay their water rates is about hundreds of dollars in water costs every year, for every household.
That inducement isn't enough, though. In its attempts to woo the country's councils, the Government first funded them $761m to provide immediate post-Covid stimulus to maintain and improve their Three Waters infrastructure, then in this year's Budget another $296m to support the establishment of new multi-regional water services entities.
Now, this month in Blenheim, Ardern has announced another $2.5b in infrastructure support for jobs, housing and compensation for certain impacts stemming from the water reforms – funding conditional on the councils proceeding with the handover of their water assets. Marlborough District Council's share of the latest tranche of money is more than $23m.
"I'm disappointed to hear them offering the council money to accept the proposal," Hammond muses. "I think that is pretty poor, really."
Hammond is in his 60s, and he's slowing down. This year, he has split the 1200ha farm with his son Simon – another generation, another ratepayer contributing to the cost of water infrastructure with ever-diminishing control of it.
Back up the Redwood Pass at the Vernon Station, farm manager Marcus Nurse says every dollar earned by farmers is spent out in their local community – but it's getting harder and harder to earn that dollar.
“I think the large protests have drawn the rural and the urban communities closer together, just because the avalanche of regulation weighs on everyone," he says. "Common sense has been replaced with extreme ideology."
At the Vernon Station, they're not even connected to town water. They don't pay water rates – yet he and his family have as vested an interest in the health of the water catchment as anyone.
“Farmers, as a group, all want to leave the land that they manage in better shape than when they took it on. We don’t need to be regulated to the nth degree to achieve that."
