The Fight for Socialist Water

Will the Wellington Region succumb to water meters and payment for water by volume used? Auckland, Tauranga, Kāpiti and Christchurch all have. There are now water meters in South Wairarapa.


Water meters are only an essential addition to the region’s water network if privatisation is to be sought. A French water company, Veolia, already has a 35-year operating contract for Papakura’s water. While it does not own the asset, it still is able to operate it so as to ensure its profit. Effectively, it is now a privatised operation.
Conjecture about the government’s plans for water are that they will impose targets that must be met by local authorities but provide no money to help meet those targets. They will provide for local authorities to enter into a partnership with private companies to raise the necessary capital.

Privatising water would be bad for working people. Water is a monopoly and if its ownership and control is separate from the people it would be a profit generating exercise at our expense. One only needs to look as far as the lines company Wellington Electricity (another monopoly that WCC privatised) to see that.


Currently, the cost of water supply is paid for by property rates (except for commercial users). The more valuable the property the more water rates are paid. People can use the water they need without being concerned about whether they can afford the cost. In particular, landlords pay for their tenants’ water use.
With water meters, tenants will get a new bill for their water use. Pigs will fly before they get a rent reduction to compensate.
How much water tenants use is not determined by how conservation-minded they might be. The key in determining the amount of water used is the quality of household water appliances, the water pressure in the mains, and whether the residence has a water pressure reduction valve. None of these factors is under the tenants’ control.

Front-loaded washing machines use half the water a top loaded one does. A WELS 6 star-rated toilet uses less than half the water that an older flushing system uses. These two items alone can account for over 35% of water use.
A landlord could reduce their tenant’s water use by updating. But will they when the tenant pays the water bill?


Commercial users mostly have water meters and are charged by the volume they use. As commercial properties generally have a high rating value the effect of payment by volume is to reduce what the water rates bill would otherwise be for businesses.
The current water payment system is not perfect but it is undeniable that people can use what they determine they need in Wellington. The ability to pay is an important factor in meeting the cost of that water supply. Socialism is “to each according to need, from each according to ability”. What we have now is as close as we will get to socialism without the people having genuine democratic control.


The water storage and reticulation network in the Wellington region are owned by the local authorities and operated by Wellington Water. WW operates two steps removed from the owners’ control (the electorate votes for a council, which appoints a governance body, which then appoints WW’s board). All its money comes from the rates paid to local authorities. WW has used this money to run an unrelenting campaign for water meters while diminishing the amount of work they do fixing leaks. They have got the new government also to weigh in on their side. The result is that all the regions mayors have now been bullied to come out in favour of installing water meters if they did not support that from the outset.
 
The arguments WW puts forward for water meters are nonsense.
 
First they say that population growth will mean greater water demand making conservation important. Yet in 1990 325,000 people used 162 million litres per day (mld) on average. By 2020, over 400,000 people were using less than 160 mld. Why will future growth in population require more water? The increase in use since 2020 is driven solely by WW’s failure to fix leaks once they brought in Fulton Hogan as their contractor in 2019. Water use technology is continually being improved in countries where water is in short supply. This improving technology can ensure that a growing population in Wellington will not need extra total water supply.
 
Second, they say water meters are needed to reduce demand for water especially in summer months. They say that meters reduced water use in Kāpiti and will achieve the same here. However, Kāpiti Coast District Council data shows that actual use of water was largely unchanged after the introduction of meters and has remained constant since. The much vaunted 26% reduction in water use was almost entirely achieved by fixing 443 leaks on private land, i.e. the 26% reduction in total use was all about fixing leaks. The average leak would have added (in today’s money) over $20 a day to the water bill leaving no alternative but for the land owner to fix the leak with the introduction of volumetric charging in Kāpiti.
 
Third, they say that water meters are needed to “identify” private leaks. This, they say, is needed because in the WCC area, for example, private leaks account for 10% of all water use. Using the Kāpiti average leak size on that figure, they are saying one in 65 houses in Wellington is leaking an average of 7,300 litres of water every day of the year. Wellington is not Kāpiti. Such a figure is clearly nonsense. Private leaks can be identified for free rather than paying $300 million to install meters. Mostly they are visible. For those that are not, if the water is turned off in the house the sound of flowing water at the toby indicates a leak.

If WCC took over fixing leaks on private land it would cost less than $2 million a year to fix 20 large leaks a week. Part of that work could be identifying houses in suburbs where invisible leaks are possible and getting residents to check. For the other obvious leaks, because there is no additional cost to the land owner in repair, they would be reported by the landowner. Opposition to water metering has previously been strong in the Wellington Region, the Wellington Residents Coalition was formed over 20 years ago when water metering was first proposed. The Coalition organises public meetings, petitions and lobbies Councils. Socialists should be supporting the Coalition’s activities and working to broaden its campaign against water metering. Tenancy organisations and student bodies are two that could be organised into supporting the free water use movement.


A central demand should be that water metering in the region be subject to a referendum. In the 19th century, referendums were used in Wellington to decide steps on supplying water. The democratic power of people has dwindled since. This government will likely want to take the water asset off councils and give it to Wellington Water. They railed about the theft of water assets with Labour’s three waters legislation. Their approach is not fundamentally different except they will remove Labour’s safeguards against privatisation.

Socialists should also promote direct action against water meters if they are imposed without the legitimacy of a referendum vote. Democracy should be about the power of people collectively to decide their future. If this is denied, and water meters are installed, a campaign of sabotage of the meters is warranted. Advocating sabotage prior to the introduction of water meters would itself act to deter their introduction.
Information on spiking meters is readily available. They are installed at the toby and so are difficult to defend against spiking. Refusal to pay separate water bills should also be promoted. The people of Ireland used both such tactics to defeat the introduction of water metering and water charges.*

 
We can do it here! Getting involved in the Residents Coalition can be achieved by attending one of its organising meetings at 1.00pm on every second Friday at Trades Hall, Vivian Street.
This issue needs to be raised throughout the networks that socialists are active in.

*[Editor Note: Partisan and Te Nuku Mauī do not officially or explicitly endorse the destruction of public property. That individual readers may, should privatised water meters be installed, seek out readily available information on how they might individually take matters into their own hands is all that this article's author is saying and we as the editors respect their right to free speech.]