Toby Adams: Hauraki District Mayor on the district having the fewest number of water leakages in the Water Services Authority's infrastructure report

One district is crediting its proactive programme for its top water ranking.  

The Water Services Authority's latest report suggests Grey District, the Far North, Queenstown, Ashburton, and Clutha councils are the worst for leakages.  

Meanwhile the place with the least leakages is Hauraki District Council.  

Mayor Toby Adams told Kerre Woodham the District has invested heavily in ensuring local dairy farms have reliable access to water.  

He says it wants to get it right, ensuring there are no disruptions and there is enough to go around.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the carry Wood and Morning's podcast from
News Talks, he'd.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Be as we were saying. A new Water New Zealand
report WARN's urgent investment is needed in the country's water networks,
with around fifteen percent of assessed drinking water and wastewater
pipes in poor or very poor condition. The report says
better information about aging infrastructure is crucial for deciding where

(00:32):
billions of dollars in future upgrades should be spent. When
it comes to councils, the worst for leakage a gray district,
the Far North, Queenstown, Ashburton and Kluther stand in the
naughty corner. You lot the least leakage or the best
in the country. Hodaki District Council and the Hodaki District
Council mayor to Hoby Adams is back from fighting fires

(00:54):
and joins me now, good morning to you.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Good morning. The apologies for that. Have to go and
help the community in many ways, so and that's one
of the jobs that I do. So it was just
fortunate when at the same time you rant now.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
And look, we know our place. If you're going off
to rescue property, lives, livestock, they're happy to take a
second place to that and thank you for your service. Now,
were you surprised to get your shout out from the
Water New Zealand authors.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yes, I mean you're always surprised to get good news
when something comes out in the media, when it comes
into regards to a council. So I hadn't quite read
this story yet. I've been given a bit of a
heads up from the report writers where we sort of sat,
but I didn't realize we were that. But we will
take pleasure on that and we don't apologize for our

(01:48):
unfortunate increasing rates in those areas because we've been very
very proactive in that space.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
So what have you done right? And how long has
it taken to get to the stage where you're at?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
I mean, we're still not finished, to be honest, and
we still want to be I mean we're nice to
be at absolutely zero, and we've still got some work
to do. But we've had a very very proactive program
in place for looking for leakages and enduring that we're
on top of those, and as soon as we're notified
as a leak, we try to get onto it as
soon as we possibly can. But also we've had we

(02:22):
all know the country's conversation around three waters and what
that means for councils. We had a very brave council
that invested heavily in our infrastructure. So we've been replacing
a lot of our water and wastewater networks, pipes, aging
pipes over the last five six years to get us
into a place where we know that we're okay for

(02:43):
the next hopefully fifty to one hundred years.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
So it was driven by council as opposed to CEOs.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Per I mean, yeah, I know we always hear that
CEO's drive councils. That might happen in the cities and
I can't see how that works, right, But for us
in rural and provincial New Zealand, the community councils really
drive the outcomes with the budgets that we've got. We
know it's hard, but we design what we need and

(03:13):
for us, and particularly in rural New Zealand, we've got
one hundred and sixty thousand cows drinking our water, we
need to make sure we get it right.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
So k pay he was the is that the name
of the pump, the upgrade to the new pump, the
water treatment plant, So.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
We've got we've got three water treatment plants, so we've
got one in ye one On and one in so
our Yi and Tidor ones support our urban lifestyle block
areas and in the plains it does the entire rural community.
So we've got we've got a lot of dairy farms

(03:55):
that rely on that water and good quality water coming
in and making sure that their cows have got something
to drink. Huge part of our GDP for Real New
Zealand and for our district, so we want to make
sure that we get it right so they they they
need that good constant supply of water, So we've got
to do everything we can to make sure there's no

(04:15):
no disruptions and then we've got enough to go around.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
You've also upgraded the pump station drawing from the Waiho River.
Is that is that something on a greater scale that
Wellington should have done? They on a greater scale, Wellington
should have done what you guys have been doing over
the past few years.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
You know, I've got to be gavel because I'm not
I'm not running for an election this year, so I
can get away with it. I'm not part of central
government politics, but I mean, we get we get branded
by central government that councils are wasting money and you've
got all these nice to have Real New Zealand doesn't
do that. We don't have nice to have. Our nice

(04:56):
to haveas are good pipes and systems. So yeah, we
we knew that that's what our community needed and we
know that they need it for prolonged time. So that's
where we've put it all over our investment and that's
where a lot of our rate increases to come from.
Those are the drivers that and roating is what really
drives rates in real provincial New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
So we all know what we should do in our lives,
and we all know what we should spend money on,
and a lot of times we don't. Was it how
you must have sold the message well to your rate
payers or do you just have an uncommonly intelligent group
of ratepayers who understand what money needs to be spent on.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
I think both. We certainly didn't do it without the
community in mind.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
No, and you couldn't have done it without the community
voting for this to happen.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
So I think the biggest driver. I mean, we had
a program in place prior to three waters because we
knew that our infrastructure was aging, we knew we did
have leaps in the area, and we knew that we
know the farming rural area relied on us heavily for
that water. So it was always in the back of
our mind. We probably pushed that program forward a lot

(06:09):
more when the Water's conversation came out because we were
just unsure who was going to run and control water
in the area, and we didn't want somebody else dictating
what we can and can't do if it hasn't been
invested in, and so we made sure that we did that.
So regardless of what happened with our water networks under
the three waters model or the local water done Well model,

(06:30):
that our district was taken care of for the next generation.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Now we've had a lot of the well not really discussion,
better discussion and a lot of techs around co governance.
How do you deal with that in your counsel?

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, I mean that's a that's a tricky one that
people that people fear. I mean, when you when you
talk to local e weis aspirations are no different than
our own aspirations, and they just want good outcomes for people.
So we don't. We're not really afraid of it. We
try and have open dialogue where we can the co covenance.

(07:06):
I think people start getting concerned that someone's going to
run that or do that. But we've had really good
outcomes when on our latest upgrade, which is our wastewater plant,
that we had a working group that included OWI in there,
and I'd say we've got a better outcome by partnering
with EWEI than we would have if we hadn't of

(07:29):
So it's nothing really to be scared of. And it's
just no different than talking to any other stakeholder in
your community, whether it's a federator, farmers group, whether it's
a community group, whether it's E WEE as a group,
you're just getting information and the more information you have,
I mean, you make better decisions. That's it at the
end of the day.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Very very nice to talk to you, Toby. Thank you
very much for taking the time and between your other
duties as a civic minded citizen.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
I'm surprised that's taken you this long career to get
me on your show. I would have thought you would
have had me long before this, having talked.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
To you, having talked to you. I'm stunned myself. I
consider that a failing. I look forward to visiting soon.
Thank you very much, Toby Adams Hodeki District Council Mayor.
What a nice chap he is.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
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