For the wastewater sector
Find out about our role working with the wastewater sector, our current and future work programmes, and how they will affect you.
Our role: wastewater
The Water Services Authority – Taumata Arowai oversees how publicly owned wastewater networks are managed, regulated and perform. Our role includes developing national standards (implemented by local government) and monitoring and reporting on environmental performance.
Recent changes to the Water Services Act 2021outbound give us more ways to improve the performance and delivery of wastewater infrastructure, including to develop National Engineering Design Standards and Codes of Practice, and to develop Infrastructure Design Solutions.
What do we mean by wastewater networks?
Wastewater networks are defined in the Water Services Act 2021 as those networks operated by councils (or their subsidiaries), government departments and the New Zealand Defence Force. Our tools only apply to these networks. Privately owned wastewater systems and very small networks are captured by Standard AS/NZS 1547:2012.
Current and future work programme
We can do a range of things to support improvements in infrastructure and the environmental performance of wastewater networks.
- Having national standards such the Wastewater Environmental Performance Standards, National Engineering Design Standards for water services networks (timing to be confirmed) and Infrastructure Design Solutions for waste and stormwater (timing to be confirmed)
- Setting Network Environmental Performance Measures – Operators must monitor and report on environmental performance measures for wastewater networks to better understand and manage environmental and public health risks. You can find more information on the Network Environmental Performance pages.
- Requiring Wastewater Network Risk Management Plans – These plans can be required under section 139 of the Water Services Act (following a notice is issued in the Gazette). When required, they must align with any relevant wastewater standards or targets and must be reviewed at least every five years.
- Developing Wastewater Environmental Performance Targets – Targets may be developed in future to further support improvements, once sufficient performance data becomes available.
We work closely with regional councils, water service providers and the water sector on wastewater. Each of these stakeholders has responsibilities for asset management and design, environmental planning, resource consents and related monitoring and enforcement.