Dean Jacqui: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Dean Jacqui: Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:642;Page:11939] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 I am very pleased to rise again to speak on Part 2 of this Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. I am very fond of water. I think water is terribly important to us in New Zealand and to me personally water is very important. I would like Government members to tell the Committee because we are very interested to know this how they are getting on with their scheme. This Labour-led Government said that the Minister of Health would contribute $154 million over the next 10 years to small communities in order to help them to get their drinking-water supplies up to standard. I would like the Minister of Health or one of the many Ministers who has sat in the chair to answer that question. In my electorate which is made up of small communities that administer small expensive water schemes those who have tried to get some of that pot of gold from the Government have found that it has not been forthcoming no matter how hard they have tried. 
The commentary on the bill states: “We were informed that most of the large and medium-sized supplies already comply or almost comply with the Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand 2000.” It goes on: “We understand that these suppliers will have little difficulty in complying with the 2005 standards.” Well that is just fantastic. It is fantastic for Auckland and Wellington; it is fantastic for Hamilton and Christchurch. But it is not fantastic for the small rural and provincial communities around New Zealand and in particular in my electorate of Otago. 
In speaking to Part 2 I just want to draw to the attention of the Committee the submission from the Waitaki District Council. Waimate is a small rural community in South Canterbury that is soon to become part of the Waitaki seat. The Waitaki District Council manages the Waimate urban water-supply scheme and six rural water schemes within the Waitaki District. I can assure members that the thought of the implementation of this legislation fills that council and that community with dread. The reason it fills the community and the councillors with dread is that they know full well that it will be not a matter just of the costs associated with the implementation of this legislation but also of the amount of work officer time and the cost to the community that will come from both the upgrades themselves and the time that officers will have to spend on making alterations to the council’s planning documents as required under Part 2. 
The submission from the Waitaki District Council states with reference to the tap-and-cap assistance schemes that it is aware that there are also a few community supplies within the district that are not managed by the council. That makes the situation even more difficult because they will also need to access the subsidy programme if they are to improve the quality of the drinking water they supply. In other words they cannot do it all by themselves. That council is concerned that the criteria could disadvantage these communities through their possible shortfalls in preparing a public health risk-management plan an inability to find the local share of any subsidy granted failure to provide an enhanced level of operator-expertise capacity or sustain ongoing whole-of-life operational maintenance and renewals costs. 
That paragraph spells out the concerns not just about privately owned small rural provincial water schemes but about those schemes that are administered by the local authority. Some small water schemes have been just fine for the last 100 years and were put in the ground by the local farmers. There are still some farmers in my region whose fathers put in those schemes and who until very recently were the only ones who knew where the pipes were; other than that it was a matter of digging and hoping when there was some work to be done on those schemes. We are talking about small community water schemes here which are owned and paid for by farmers through water committees or by small local authorities who simply do not have the resources to comply with the onerous responsibilities of the requirements in this legislation.