Western Bay Uses Iwi Considerations to Turn Off Water Proposal

By John Freer

Ratepayers and residents across the Thames Coromandel district are allowed to feel gutted with a cost-saving regional water partnership being turned off by one of the potential partners.

Western Bays District Council has relented to the pressure of local tangata whenua, who are involved in a Treaty of Waitangi dispute with some Hauraki Iwi and have now firmly slammed the door on any partnership.

Achieving a three-way water services delivery agreement across Thames Coromandel, Western Bays and the Tauranga City Council would have provided significant cost savings estimated in time to reach $500 a year for each ratepayer.

Western Bays Mayor, James Denyer, confirmed to CFM this weekend that the door for Thames Coromandel was now closed, this decision hinged solely on iwi considerations specifically, unresolved treaty settlement issues in Tauranga Moana.

He said there was no appetite to work with Thames Coromandel due to tangata whenua treaty issues.

The government’s Local Water Done Well reforms, requiring councils to submit sustainable water service plans by September 3, pushed Thames Coromandel district councillors to explore a multi-council Water Services Organisation (WSO) with Tauranga City Council (TCC) and Western Bay of Plenty District Council (WBOPDC).

Initially, TCC threw a spanner in the works earlier this month, voting for an in-house model and rejecting collaboration.

Ten days later TCC did an about-face, opening the door to a joint WSO with WBOPDC and potentially TCDC.

At an extraordinary TCC meeting last Friday, Thames Coromandel councillor John Grant made a compelling case for his district’s inclusion, highlighting how a three-council model could ease financial pressures through shared infrastructure costs.

That same day WBOPDC held a special meeting it was then that any chance of the three-way partnership was finally shut down.

During the meeting, councillors noted TCDC’s “continued desire” to join the WSO, but scrapped a clause to progress due diligence, effectively cutting Thames Coromandel out.

Tauranga, mainly through Mayor Mahe Drysdale, offered a lifeline, but WBOPDC’s iwi-driven stance has now left TCDC to go it alone with an in-house water management plan.

There was no hiding Cr Grant’s disappointment being aware of local residents’ frustration in facing likely rate hikes to fund water services without regional support.

He said the exclusion, driven entirely by Tauranga Moana’s concerns, ignored his district’s economic realities, leaving it to navigate the reforms’ demands solo.

Cr Grant said it was obvious no thought was given to the financial hit TCDC residents now faced, he being particularly disappointed that financial considerations for ratepayers in all districts were hardly considered in Western Bays decision.

Meanwhile yesterday in answering a question at the Matarangi Meet the Mayoral candidate’s event regarding his potential involvement in settling the tangata whenua issue, Mayor Len Salt said the relationship with Iwi partners could not be answered on 30 seconds, and it won’t be resolved overnight.