Play your part in shaping your water services
If you use water services in our region, you are affected by our decisions. Decisions like how we look after our networks today, how we keep them running in the future, and how we recover the rising costs to deliver for you 24 hours a day, every day.
Help us face some massive challenges
There are some things we have no choice about. We have to meet our responsibilities under law. We have to provide safe and reliable water services. We have to protect our waterways and our wider environment. And we have to be financially sustainable.
Government regulation means we can’t charge less than what it costs to do all this, and we can’t charge more than that. We aren’t allowed to make profits for shareholders – every bit of revenue, including any operating surplus, has to go back into managing water services for our community.
Help us build on our initial strategy
Water Services Strategy 2026–27 was a starting point. Now we’re working on a detailed review on how we design charges suitable for our future.
We want you to be a part of it.
Sign up at the top of the page, get updates before formal consultation, and be a part of the decisions that shape our water future.
The hard facts
IAWAI was created because the old system wasn’t working. IAWAI has tools and options the councils didn’t have. But we aren’t yet covering our costs. That means price rises are inevitable, but they will be lower than councils could provide. We are working hard to keep costs down but we have to deal with five major issues:
1: Increased costs
Today’s actual costs to deliver services are greater than were forecast in previous council planning. New global issues, localised inflation and reduced revenue from a flat economy have changed the financial picture. Operating water services as a standalone entity in 2026 has revealed the true costs are significantly higher than council data from 2023/24 indicated.
2: Catching up on work
We have to catch up on work that hasn’t been done. One of the biggest reasons IAWAI was formed is that historically councils haven’t invested enough. We have to spend more than $200 million on assets already coming to the end of their useful life.
3: Investing for the future
We need to recover the costs of supporting and responding to growth. Two thirds of the $3 billion we plan to spend in the next ten years is associated with growth. Without it, our services will fail our next generation.
4: Covering operating costs
We need to cover our operating costs.
Hamilton City residential ratepayers, on average, have had one of the lowest water charges in the country for many years. It hasn’t covered costs. That’s not sustainable.
Waikato District charges overall are closer to the actual costs of providing services, but there’s still a shortfall, with some networks at capacity. Like parts of Hamilton, that’s restricting economic growth and further employment opportunities for those communities.
5: Legal responsibilities
By law, we have to obtain and comply with waters consents, meet water quality standards, sustainably fund maintenance and ensure we have a service that protects our people and the environment. We are required to transition away from capital value charging within five years, which will impact costs for people in different ways. These requirements all cost money and they aren’t optional.
The big questions
Planning a strategy to deliver new investment and keep your water services operating means understanding when and where some decisions will impact others. Until we can sustainably cover our costs we are building debt and interest costs.
Deferring growth spending reduces debt but that approach has already left a bow-wave of investment needed now. If we fail to properly maintain our assets, network failures are inevitable, with unavoidable impacts on households, public health and the environment. And we need to catch up on maintenance that hasn’t been done.
These are big challenges, but we have options and your feedback can shape the decisions we make. Some of the big questions we are weighing up include:
- How and when do we achieve sustainable cost recovery?
- How do we balance fixed charging and metered charges?
- Do we have a flat charge for access to our networks?
- Do we charge an increasing rate for high users?
- Do we include a basic water usage allowance within the fixed charge
- Do we pay more now and reduce the future debt burden (and future cost for users)?
- Do we use debt to smooth price rises for longer?
- How and when do we invest for growth, and how we charge developers?
- How soon do we get to a consistent charge across the region? And what does that look like for households? For business? For small or large communities?
- Do we allow people to choose to bring forward investment in their own community?
Be part of the decisions
We are at the start of the journey to build a 10-year Strategy.
We are clearly identifying the challenges we face. The big questions need to be addressed first to guide how we develop future options.
We’ll be going to our community later in 2026 to get feedback on some key principles about how we build our draft Strategy.
We’ll use that feedback to develop a draft Strategy and a detailed consultation document. In early 2027 there will be a month-long formal consultation.
We’ll review the consultation feedback and refine the Strategy for our Board to consider.
By July 2027, we must have this plan in place. Sign up for updates and stay informed so IAWAI and our community can build our plan together.
In the news
IAWAI adopts first Water Services Strategy