For water organisations
Information for councils transitioning water services to water organisations
Changes to the Local Government (Water Services) Act 2025 mean that councils may transfer the ownership and operation of their water services to a water organisation.
The transition phase
We will be contacting councils and water organisations directly with details of what is required in the transition process. Our commitment is to support you through this transition by making your regulatory obligations as clear, straightforward and practical as possible.
We will develop additional resources specifically for water organisations, please check this web page for updates. If you have questions in the meantime, please contact our Operations Support team, email OperationsSupport@taumataarowai.govt.nz.
Our role as a regulator
As the Water Services Authority - Taumata Arowai, our purpose is to ensure safe, reliable and sustainable drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services for communities across the country. We regulate the supply of drinking water and have a system-wide leadership role in setting expectations, monitoring performance and supporting the sector to lift capability and deliver for the public.
We provide national leadership across New Zealand’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater services. We provide national oversight and advice about the regulation, management and performance of publicly owned water networks. The Authority regulates drinking water suppliers so they meet the requirements and standards for delivering safe drinking water.
Our role in wastewater and stormwater is developing national standards and monitoring and reporting on environmental performance. Regional councils remain the regulators for wastewater and stormwater consents.
The Authority sets and oversees drinking water quality and sector-wide performance standards, codes of practice, and targets for public water networks. This includes reporting on compliance and the enforcement of standards, and other requirements to improve transparency of their safety, consistency, reliability and effectiveness.
By providing nationally consistent reporting about the performance of water services, the Authority helps New Zealanders understand the impacts of our water networks and where improvements are needed.
Our expectations of water organisations
We look forward to water organisations leading the way by effectively managing risks, demonstrating full compliance, and building a strong culture of water safety. Our goals and expectations for safe drinking water in Aotearoa New Zealand are set out in our Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement Strategy.
As water services organisations, you inherit the expectations we have set for councils. Water organisations must:
- fully comply with the Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules or an Acceptable Solution and associated reporting requirements
- fully comply with New Zealand’s Drinking Water Standards
- respond promptly to drinking water safety risks with appropriate action
- maintain robust risk management plans, including drinking water safety plans
- collect and manage their data in a way that ensures complete and accurate reporting to the Authority
- inform the Authority of identified significant risk and report incidents and emergencies as they happen
- demonstrate progress towards resilience (e.g. planning for outages or significant hazardous events)
- use the consent conditions set out in the wastewater standards for new or renewed wastewater consents, unless an exception applies.
Your role in the transition process
There are three major components of the transition councils and organisations will need to action with us.
- Registration – You will need to manage updating registration details with the Authority and ensure that the details of supplies and networks are transferred.
- Levy – You will need to arrange payment of your levy obligations, with payment required by 30 June.
- Reporting – You will need to ensure that data needed for reporting is transferred to organisations so that they can meet their reporting obligations.
We will contact you directly to request information on the above, and will provide a checklist to assist you.