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.
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.