Water meters costly and unnecessary says KWAG

The Kapiti Coast District Council should drop its single-minded obsession with water meters and look at other ways to reduce water demand, says the Kapiti Water Action Group (KWAG).

“There appears to have been little effort to consider other options to metering. The council has simply gone out looking for evidence that supports a user-pays system. Other data has been ignored,” says KWAG spokesperson Tina McIvor.

“There are huge differences in water use in different areas of the coast. Rather than trying to apply models from elsewhere, the council should be looking at why water use is low in parts of the coast and encourage the other areas to adopt this behaviour,” says McIvor.

“We don't need to be spending $8 million plus on-going costs while billing people for water as ratepayers already struggle to make ends meet. It's unfair and unsustainable.”

Many ratepayers remain unconvinced by the case for water meters which seems to be based on anecdotal research.

“Meters do not equate to water conservation. Studies in psychology raise serious doubts as to the effectiveness of financial incentives to promote changes in behaviour. One of the issues is the observation that individuals may modify their behaviour in the short term in reaction to price changes, but in the longer term revert to their old habits. This is called adaption level theory. Non-pricing measures like education, leakage reduction, and subsidies to adopt more efficient water appliances are far more effective.”

“KWAG encourages locals to make submissions to the council on water meters and charging this week. Submissions close on Thursday, April 28th.

More information:

Some inaccuracies that have arisen in the case for water meters:

The Local Government Act 2002 may forbid the express privatisation of water, but it does allow water supply to be contracted out for up to 35 years, including to multi-nationals. Auckland is seeing the effect of their water being used as a cash cow.

KCDC has never proposed providing free water to anyone. In their consultation document Options for Consumption Based Water Charges (2007), all proposed pricing structures impose a charge from the first litre of water used.

KCDC would need to collect at least the same revenue from consumption-based charges as they do now from rates-based water charges. So a decrease in charges for one and two person households (as promoted by Jenny Rowan) will require an increase for larger households, the majority of whom are families on the Kapiti Coast. In fact, the Council would probably need to collect more money than they do now due to the cost of administering water meters (installing, reading, invoicing, maintenance and replacement after their 10-year life) that extends to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

To exacerbate the problem, water meter charges always go up, one reason being that reduced demand is likely to equal increased prices. That is, if KCDC achieved a 25% reduction in demand in two years as they aspired to, given that most water supply costs are fixed because they are related to infrastructure, a price increase of 15% or so would be required to maintain income.

ENDS

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