Councils at odds over water scheme

A terse exchange of press releases between two Southland councils indicates the issue of who ends up paying for water in the future is far from settled.

Southland District Council chief executive Dave Adamson took a swipe at Environment Southland for not informing it about a proposed user-pays water take scheme.

Environment Southland intends to make major users of water in the region pay resource monitoring costs.

Mr Adamson, in his release, says the first he heard about the proposal was by reading about it in The Southland Times yesterday.

Meanwhile, Environment Southland chief executive Ciaran Keogh says according to the Southland District Council release Mr Adamson was dumbfounded and displeased by the proposal to increase fees on Southland's water users.

Mr Adamson said the council believed it was working in a no-surprises environment with its neighbouring local authorities. "I am disappointed that this matter has not been raised sooner as some of our communities may have to defer essential works because of this additional burden," he said.

The council was also annoyed that after preparing its long-term council community plan additional costs could be added because of Environment Southland's water proposal. "We're going through our 10-year planning process and certainly the regional council is aware of that planning process," he said.

Water resource monitoring programmes provided benefit to all Environment Southland ratepayers and should be met by those ratepayers, Mr Adamson said.

The council would make a strong submission to Environment Southland on the issue, he said.

Mr Keogh said high water resources monitoring costs needed to be met by those who benefited the most and there was no reason the general ratepayer should have to dig into their pockets.

All ratepayers, including Mr Adamson, were invited to make submissions on the issue and any other proposal in their draft plan, Mr Keogh said. "That's why it's so disappointing to see Mr Adamson attempt to subvert the long-term community council planning process by bringing his grievances to the media rather than addressing them in a submission to Environment Southland."

Invercargill City Council chief executive Richard King said he was aware of the plans and the council was comfortable with it. While water rates would go up, the regional charge Environment Southland collects on all ratepayers would fall to compensate, he said.

Federated Farmers Southland president David Rose said he was concerned farmers had again been singled out for extra costs and would be interested to see the methodology and planning behind the proposal. "We're actually really hanging out for the LTCCP because we're really only getting drip-fed info."

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