Help shape our water future
We want to hear from you as we prepare our Water Services Strategy 2027–37.
Survey now open
Our quick survey closes 24 November 2026.
Tell us what matters most to you about the water services your home or business relies on.
This isn’t the formal consultation on our Water Services Strategy. That will come early next year.
For now, your feedback will help us understand what matters most to our communities as we shape the options, and explain what can and can’t change.
About our next strategy
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.
Our first Water Services Strategy was just the start. We’re now creating our next 10-year plan for drinking water and wastewater services across Hamilton and Waikato.
What it will include
- How we fund water services and charge customers
- How homes, businesses and new developments share the costs
- How much we invest in water infrastructure over the next 10 years
The value of your water services
Delivering safe, reliable water takes people, pipes, treatment plants, testing and power.
Watch this short video to learn why investment is needed to keep our water services working today and prepare them for the future.
Water services are essential for our communities and funded by our communities.
Be part of the decisions
We are working with our community to get feedback before the IAWAI Board makes its final decisions on the Water Services Strategy 2027–37.
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Nov 2026
Tell us what matters to you
10 to 24 November 2026
Take our quick survey and share your views about water services. We will use your feedback to shape the options for formal consultation in 2027.
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From Dec 2026
We prepare the draft strategy
December 2026 to February 2027
Community feedback will help us prepare the draft strategy and the options for formal consultation.
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Mar 2027
Have your say during formal consultation
Review the draft strategy and tell us what you support and what you think should change.
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Apr 2027
We update the draft strategy
We review all feedback and update the draft strategy before presenting it to the IAWAI Board.
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May 2027
The IAWAI Board considers your feedback
The IAWAI Board will consider all feedback and decide what changes to make to the draft strategy.
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Jun 2027
The IAWAI Board adopts the final strategy
The IAWAI Board adopts the final Water Services Strategy 2027–37, setting the direction for water services over the next decade.
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.
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?