Our priority projects for 2025
Drinking water
Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement Strategy 2025-28
Our vision is for everyone in New Zealand to have safe drinking water when they turn on the tap. It’s a big goal that will take all of us working together across the drinking water sector to get there.
To help move toward that vision, our latest Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement Strategy 2025-28 (CME Strategy), published on 10 July 2025, provides a three-year action plan for how we will regulate drinking water safety.
It focuses on the biggest risks identified in the Drinking Water Regulation Report 2024 and outlines what suppliers need to do to address these. Namely, suppliers improving their systems, practices and infrastructure so that everyone has safe drinking water basics in place.
Read the CME Strategy to find out what this means for you.
A continued laser focus on safe drinking water
Council suppliers and several central government agencies provide drinking water to 83% (~4.4 million) of people in New Zealand.
Most but not all of these supplies have essential bacterial and protozoa treatment measures in place. Over the past year, as a result of our regulatory work to ensure all public supplies have essential multi-barrier protections, around 500,000 more New Zealanders are on track to have access to safer drinking water by the end of 2025.
Our CME Strategy highlights that suppliers getting the basics of safe drinking water in place will continue to be a top focus area for us.
Advice and guidance to support suppliers
This year we intend to increase the guidance available for drinking water suppliers to help them deliver good quality water to their communities. Our aim is to ensure this guidance is tailored for different groups of suppliers and is easy to use and understand.
Review of the Rules that apply to drinking water suppliers
We are working at pace to review the Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules (the Rules) to make them more straightforward for drinking water suppliers to use to meet their responsibilities.
In 2024, for small to medium drinking water supplies (serving 500 people or fewer), we consulted on and updated the Rules.
These refreshed rules came into effect 1 January 2025. We've developed supporting information to help suppliers understand what the changes mean for them and further guidance is being developed.
In 2025, we plan to review, consult on and update the Rules for large drinking water supplies, those that serve more than 500 people. There is an opportunity to work with us to ensure that our rules are fit for purpose for all communities.
Community and privately-owned (commercial) supplies
Some 14% of New Zealand’s drinking water is provided through community and privately-owned supplies. Many of these supplies are in remote or rural areas, can be hard to reach, affected by adverse weather and are run by volunteers, whānau or local communities.
Later this year, we will start publishing handy resources to support community and privately-owned supplies to ensure the drinking water they supply to their communities is safe.
Opportunity for greater uptake of more cost-effective treatment options
Drinking water suppliers have a range of options to support their responsibilities to provide safe drinking water
One option is to provide centralised treatment and to follow the Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules. Another option – one that we think many community and private drinking water suppliers might want to consider for their communities – is to treat water at the house or building where it is consumed with an “end-point treatment” system and to follow an Acceptable Solution.
On September 2025, we improved Acceptable Solutions to make them more cost-effective and easier to understand and use.
This update responded to, and was informed by, sector and supplier feedback. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Find out more about the improved Acceptable Solutions.
You can use an online tool to figure out what kind of supply you manage and the compliance pathways that apply for that supply as you work to provide safe drinking water to the people you serve.
Addressing key barriers around mixed-use rural supplies
As mentioned above, Acceptable Solutions are currently available for three types of drinking water supplies:
- mixed-use rural
- small to medium networks
- self-supplied buildings.
Supplies are classified as ‘mixed-use rural’ if at least 50% of water supplied is for farm (e.g. stock or irrigation) use and up to 50% is used as drinking water.
We have identified some challenges and opportunities to improve the safety of drinking water for consumers on mixed-use rural supplies and have made resolving these a priority in 2025.
We have established an advisory group to help us understand key barriers around mixed-use rural supplies and how we can overcome them. Our aim is to save drinking water suppliers and the communities they serve time, effort and cost and deliver good quality drinking water.
Wastewater
National wastewater environmental performance standards
Our vision is for eveA key priority for 2025 is the development of New Zealand’s first set of nationally consistent wastewater environmental performance standards.
Most of New Zealand’s wastewater infrastructure was built 30 to 40 years ago and is reaching the end of its useful life.
Over the coming decade, approximately 60% of public wastewater treatment plants will need to renew a wastewater consent.
We’ve developed an initial set of standards alongside a number of experts from councils, the industry, and iwi and hapū. These relate to the discharge of treated wastewater to water and to land, the beneficial reuse of biosolids, and to the monitoring and reporting of wastewater overflows and bypasses.
The proposed standards would set nationally consistent requirements for public wastewater networks and operators to meet. This would drive cost efficiencies and support network owners to better plan for the cost of infrastructure – while protecting public and environmental health. Standards also aim to make monitoring and compliance for regional councils easier by standardising contaminant limits and the monitoring and reporting requirements in consents.
We have undertaken specific engagement on the standards with iwi and hapū in the Waikato, Waipā and Whanganui River catchments in line with our Treaty settlement obligations. Broader engagement with iwi and hapū, subject to interest and capacity took place between February and May.
The consultation on the proposed standards closed in April 2025. Since then this feedback, alongside additional input from technical experts, has informed our work developing a final set of proposed standards for Cabinet to consider.
We’ll take the steps required to finalise these standards after the Local Government (Water Services) Bill has passed, amending both the Water Services Act and the Resource Management Act. We expect final standards to be published by October 2025.
Overall role
Annual national performance reporting published in June
In June 2025, we published two reports to provide the public with a transparent view of the state of drinking water and some commentary on the challenges facing drinking water, wastewater and stormwater networks in New Zealand.
We produce these reports each year.
- Drinking Water Regulation Report 2024. Covers supplier performance based on data and information for the 2024 calendar year provided by registered drinking water suppliers about the safety and sufficiency of the drinking water they supply.
- Network Environmental Performance Report 2023/24. Covers data and information for 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024 provided by operators of publicly owned drinking water networks and includes some information about urban public wastewater and urban stormwater networks.