This year will be decisive for Iawai, the publicly-owned water company set to become one of the Waikato’s largest and most influential entities.
Peter Winder
From July 1, Iawai will own the water and wastewater systems previously managed by Hamilton City and Waikato District Councils. Water-related debt will transfer with those assets. We are charged with delivering services faster, more efficiently, and at the lowest cost to residents and businesses that we can.
From day one, performance will be scrutinised by our councils, Waikato Tainui, and of course the wider community. We will also be regulated by the Commerce Commission, the Water Services Authority – Taumata Arawai, and the Waikato Regional Council.
The stakes are significant. Clean, safe drinking water is essential, as is the health of the Waikato River. We must get it right if communities across our network are to thrive and in some instances, operate. Decades of under-investment in water infrastructure across New Zealand has left systems under strain. While the Waikato is better positioned than some regions, we still face a substantial backlog of infrastructure projects alongside rapid population growth. Without a more commercial approach, these pressures will only intensify.
Our immediate priority is a seamless transition of services from councils to Iawai with no disruption to water services. We are also changing the way we operate, starting with how we procure and deliver work, and particularly, renewals.
Mayors celebrate: Waikato’s Jacqui Church and Paula Southgate of Hamilton. Photo: Supplied.
Historically renewals work—the maintenance that keeps existing assets performing— was contracted separately by each council, typically for periods of one to three years. Councils were constrained by their ability to borrow and a lack of scale. We can do better.
By March, Iawai intends to go to market with a Request for Proposal (RFP) covering renewals across the entire network. By July, we aim to enter into a single 10-year relationship-based partnership potentially worth around half a billion dollars.
This is a material shift. It allows Iawai to leverage scale, build durable partnerships and secure better value. It also provides certainty and a longer pipeline of guaranteed work to our partners —something the infrastructure sector has been calling for, for years. A predictable pipeline of work helps drive investment, productivity, and capability. Iawai is now in a position to provide it.
This approach will attract suppliers who may not previously have engaged with councils, whether due to scale, a lack of skilled capacity, or short contract horizons. At the same time, local firms should not assume they will be sidelined. We have already engaged with Civil Contractors NZ to explore frameworks that ensure Waikato and Hamilton businesses can participate. A strong local civil construction sector benefits everyone, and Iawai has a role in sustaining it.
Hamilton Water Treatment Plant 2025
Te Kauwhata waste water treatment plant opening 2024
Existing renewals contracts will continue until completion. Over time however, we expect most renewals to move under the partnership model. This may be new to publicly-funded water infrastructure, but is standard practice in other infrastructure sectors.
We are also engaging with developers now to get the outcomes we all want. In high-growth areas such as Pookeno, Te Kowhai and parts of Hamilton, development is already constrained by limited wastewater and/or water supply capacity. Growth and development – including the development of new housing – has been stymied.
There is no silver bullet to challenges which have developed over decades and been exacerbated by the intense growth across Hamilton and the wider Waikato. We are already developing an ambitious capital works programme to respond to high growth pressures. We are also exploring new revenue streams, including charges associated with new housing and new commercial development, to ensure that growth – and not existing water and wastewater users – pays for growth.
We must make prudent use of long-term debt to fund essential infrastructure, ensuring costs are shared fairly between today’s users and future beneficiaries. We must seek innovation and partnerships that unlock constraints to growth. And we must drive savings to ensure our water charges can be as low as possible.
Iawai’s direction will be set out in a Water Services Strategy to be released in March. It will outline how we plan for growth, manage assets, meet regulatory requirements and prioritise investment—and what those priorities mean for communities. The feedback on that strategy matters. So does the shift already underway: treating the development of water infrastructure as the complex, long-term, business it truly is.
Water, water everywhere
