Our priority projects for 2025

Council suppliers and several 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. This will continue to be a top focus area for us.

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.

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 private supplies provide drinking water to over 73,000 people across New Zealand.

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 in 2025, we'll start publishing handy resources to support community and private supplies to ensure the drinking water they supply to their communities is safe.

Some drinking water suppliers have 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 people drink it with an “end-point treatment” system and to follow an Acceptable Solution.

We expect to have updated Acceptable Solutions in place around the middle of 2025. The aim is to make it more straightforward for suppliers to determine if an Acceptable Solution is the right compliance option for their supplies and communities.

One Acceptable Solution is available for mixed-use rural drinking water supplies.

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 people 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 their communities time, effort and cost, while delivering good quality drinking water.

We expect that any changes made to Acceptable Solutions this year, and supporting guidance materials produced, will help support this aim.

A 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.

From February to April 2025, we consulted on an initial set of proposed standards. This proposal was developed alongside a number of experts from councils, the industry, and iwi and hapū.

Standards were proposed for the:

• discharge of treated wastewater to water and to land
• beneficial reuse of biosolids
• monitoring and reporting on 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 monitoring and reporting requirements in consents.

We have been undertaking 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, will continue into the future.

All consultation feedback will inform a final proposal that will be  provided to the Minister of Local Government for decision making.  

It is intended that the proposed standards would take effect as soon as possible after the Local Government (Water Services) Bill has passed, amending both the Water Services Act and the Resource Management Act. This is expected in August 2025. 

We will work alongside the sector to support the implementation of the confirmed standards, including developing guidance. 

A proposed new levy to fund the Authority is expected to be in place by 1 July 2025.

Under the proposal, the levy applies to councils and council-controlled organisations (CCOs) that supply water services to the majority of people in New Zealand. (Private and community suppliers, such as marae, are not proposed to be subject to the levy.)

The Government recently finished consulting on the proposal and consideration of feedback is underway. If approved by the Government, we would work with councils and CCOs on the levy’s implementation.

In June 2025, we will publish two reports that cover the state of drinking water and commentary on the challenges facing 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.

Production of these reports, which we look to improve each year, is a significant commitment by us to provide greater public transparency on the changing state of water services in New Zealand.