District Council officials do not regard world-wide dominating climate events like floods, droughts, storms and wildfires as part of the most important “challenges and opportunities” the South Wairarapa community faces. Storm and flood-hit Nelson, Tasman, Hawkes Bay, Wairoa, Gisborne, Auckland and Northland may have a different view.
Both the formal 2025 and 2022 SWDC “Pre-election Report” from the chief executive of the day currently Janice Smith do mention climate change.
The 2022 pre-election report simply noted “climate change resilience” as an issue.
In 2025 Mrs Smith is more expansive: “Climate change will see the need for future councils to respond to extreme weather, and changing weather patterns, with a focus on what that means to our community, our assets and our infrastructure.”
“Future councils” (as noted above) suggests there is no need to consider these issues dominating world headlines as possibly affecting this region in the near term but sometime in the “future.”
Instead of the on-going and intensifying climate crisis, the 2025 report focuses first on the issue of growth as “growth in the region puts pressure on Council services and infrastructure and it is important to manage this growth in a sustainable way.”
The No. 1 growth heading is wastewater, with acknowledgment that the sewerage treatment plants in Martinborough and Greytown “are currently unable to take on any new connections due to performance and compliance issues.” So much for growth.
It continues:
“This is a result of aging infrastructure across the whole water network, which has historically had low levels of investment over its lifetime. The future Council must deal with historic underinvestment in infrastructure, while considering growth for the district.”
Rating and user charges do get some focus, though the word “rates” itself does not appear yet it is surely the most vexatious noun in the local body lexicon.
Instead, Smith writes: “Sustainable funding for public facilities. Over the next triennium Council will need to determine the appropriate level of service for facilities and consider the right balance between user charges and ratepayer funding.”
With rates and user charges having already risen steeply in the very recent past, how should residents read this statement? A warning of more to come? Diminution of services?
She notes historic under-investment: “There will likely be a need for deliberate and strategic decision-making on each asset to determine the appropriate response. That may be to divest the asset, improve the asset, or simply run to end of life.”
Smith adds. Then there are the changes and demands which she views as “major challenges” of central government to contend with.
“Reviews and reforms by central government have the potential to fundamentally change the system that local government operates within, including what local government does and how it does it,” Smith warns.
Local Water Done Well tops her major challenges for the period ahead. By November, when the newcouncillors are sworn in, the “Wai+T” four-legged water entity will have been signed off by central government officials as the region’s new Council Controlled Organisation (CCO).
This, she adds optimistically, “will enable access to higher debt limits to finance critical renewals, upgrades and capacity improvements, all of
which will improve the quality of water services for our community.”
The new CCO “will be” fully established by July 2026 and delivering services to the community by July 2027 “at the latest.”
Then could come the long-promised deluge: the Resource Management Reform Act, seen as: “narrowing the scope of the resource management system, with simplified planning rules and standardised zones. It will also enhance local decision-making, allowing elected local representatives to focus more time on deciding where development should and should not occur in their community.”
When the amended law passes, “work will be required to determine how the new national legislation will apply locally.”
Full report: swdc.govt.nz/wp-content/uploads/Pre-election-report-2025-FINAL2.pdf
