Profits on tap from metered water

OPINION: Fresh water is not something New Zealand is short of. In fact, we've been rated as fifth in the world in terms of available supplies per person.

And Wellington is the wettest city in New Zealand. So it might seem odd that Wellington City Council recently decided to introduce residential water metering if Wellingtonians don't reduce their water use.

The council is treating water meters as a threat - cut your water use or we'll bring in a user-pays system to make you use less and pay more. And a threat it is.

Reticulated water isn't like other goods and services. It's a basic need and a natural monopoly - there is no alternative to water.

You can't shop around for a cheaper product or switch to something else - unless you follow Cleopatra's example and bathe in asses' milk.

Meters mean everyone, no matter how frugal they are with water, has to pay for the amount they need to drink, cook and clean with. Water stops being treated as an essential service (which we already pay for through our rates), a human right and a public good and is instead turned into commodity.

Wellington residents are already modest users of water and we've been decreasing our per capita residential use for the past decade. But population increase, an ageing and leaky pipe network, and commercial use have meant the city's water use as a whole has increased.

It's also likely to increase in the future. No fault of residents, but they'll get punished for it with compulsory metering and user- pays.

Water charges will hit low-income households the hardest. The city council has admitted that, since reticulated water is cheap, it would have to inflate the price beyond the cost of supply to achieve its targeted reductions. For a lot of people that will mean greater hardship.

While their well-off neighbours will be able to afford to fill their swimming pools and wash their SUVs, those with tight budgets are faced with the additional stress of another bill in the letterbox. Vegetable gardens will become a luxury.

In Auckland, where residents are already metered, budgeting services have reported that many families are struggling to pay their water bills. Most of the cost of supplying water is fixed, so if people reduce their water use the price rises to cover the company's costs.

In May this year Auckland's water company, Metrowater, cited reduced water use as a reason for a 6 per cent increase in residential water charges.

Aside from the social and economic costs of meters, there is limited evidence that water meters will reduce Wellington's water use. Statistics bandied about by pro-metering advocates don't stand up to much scrutiny.

International studies report a wide range of impacts, from zero savings to considerable savings, but acknowledge low confidence in the figures.

High savings are usually reported from continental countries with large differences between summer and winter use or from Third World countries with widespread poverty. Neither situation applies to Wellington.

In New Zealand, exaggerated claims of reductions in water use following the introduction of meters are often made. Pro-metering groups attribute any reductions in water use to the installation of residential water meters, regardless of simultaneous reductions in commercial use, in leakage from pipes and the results of education campaigns and wetter summers.

And they ignore instances in which water use has declined by comparable amounts in areas where water meters have not been installed.

So, if the conservation benefits are not clear, where is the push for meters coming from?

In proposing meters, Wellington City Council was rubber-stamping the recommendations of Capacity, its water management company. Capacity is a council- controlled trading organisation, and as such is legally obliged to work for profit.

Capacity is just one of many organisations working in water that blur the line between the public and private sectors. Although under council control, only two of Capacity's six directors are democratically elected; the others come from the private sector.

However, Capacity is not politically neutral. It is a member of Water NZ, one of a number of industry lobby groups calling for residential water metering. These groups have moved from using economic arguments for meters to making claims that water meters are a positive environmental measure, but their aim is unchanged - to commercialise water.

Globally, the water industry is worth about US$400 billion. The Government is working to increase private sector involvement in New Zealand infrastructure, which, coupled with new pricing regimes adopted by councils, would provide a ripe environment for corporations here to make profits from water.

The city council should take note. It's unlikely that water meters would significantly reduce water use. What's certain is that they would increase hardship, erode a public good and satisfy the vested interests of a few businesses.

* Maria McMillan is spokeswoman for Right to Water, a community group working against the commodification and privatisation of household water supply.

- © Fairfax NZ News