IAWAI has confirmed a project to roll out residential water metering in Hamilton over four years. The project was one of the proposed budget items in the Water Services Strategy consultation earlier this year. Hamilton already has commercial water metering and Waikato District already has residential and commercial metering.
The primary reasons behind the decision are:
It’s the single biggest efficiency saving we can make.
Water costs will be far higher for households if we don’t introduce metering. Experience in other parts of New Zealand and around the world show reductions of 20% or more in peak demand when metering is introduced. This means our current treatment system and network can supply households for longer, deferring significant cost. Without demand management, we will need to bring forward around $780 million in new infrastructure - these are unbudgeted costs which would drive household water bills higher.
It helps us stay within our water consent limits
There are limits on how much water we are allowed to take from the Waikato River. Hamilton households use around 50% more water per person than households in Tauranga – at this rate we will hit the limits of our consent to take water within the next 10 years.
It protects the environment and our awa
Every litre we don’t take from our Waikato awa helps preserve its health and the life it supports. It’s a litre we don’t need to treat before drinking, and it’s a litre we don’t need to treat before we return it to the awa. We have legal obligations to meet the requirements of Te Ture Whaimana o Te Awa o Waikato (the Vision and Strategy for the Waikato River). Te Ture Whaimana holds a vision for a future where a healthy Waikato River sustains abundant life and prosperous communities who, in turn, are all responsible for restoring and protecting the health and wellbeing of the Waikato River, and all it embraces, for generations to come.
It lets us identify private leaks to reduce waste
Planning for metering included small-scale pilot programmes to inform procurement planning. A pilot programme in Hamilton East showed the benefits of metering data – out of 200 households in the pilot, the trial identified 19% had water leaks on private property – allowing a combined 5.1 million litres of treated drinking water to be wasted every year.
It’s a fairer way to charge and it meets Government’s requirements
Hamilton residents have historically paid for water through rates, based on their property’s relative value. If two households have the same property value, they essentially pay the same for water services, regardless of whether one is a single occupant and the other is a large household with a swimming pool, spa and a garden irrigation system. Metering would support the transition from capital value-based charging to volumetric charging, which offers a fairer user-pays charging method and aligns with legislative requirements.
The meters will be installed across a four-year programme and will start after a further trial of more than 1000 properties across a larger area (a full water pressure zone). Older areas of the city which likely have more private leaks will be tackled first to get the most benefit from waste reduction.
The capital cost for the project across both Hamilton and Waikato District is budgeted at $108.71 million, with an operating cost of $46.45 million. As this is an entirely new system for Hamilton, the cost isn’t just for the meters themselves. The budget includes building the initial network and management systems to support metering, purchase and installation costs of the meters, as well as ongoing operation, billing and maintenance costs across 15 years. It also includes the cost of converting Waikato District meters to digital metering.
You can read the full board paper from the 18 June Board Meeting here.