The Waiāri Water Treatment Plant has officially opened but not everyone is happy about how the water is being used.

The Waiāri water supply scheme takes water from the Waiāri Stream in Te Puke then it is treated at a plant on No 1 Road in Te Puke to supply water to Pāpāmoa and Mount Maunganui.

The treatment plant has been operational since December last year but an official opening ceremony was held today.

Staff and officials from Tauranga City Council and the Western Bay of Plenty District Council as well as other key stakeholders gathered to celebrate the opening that included a ribbon cutting and tree planting.

At the end of proceedings Rosina Anne Reokore Potiki of Tapuika Iwi congratulated everyone but expressed her concerns with the project.

'You actually don't produce water here, the water belongs to the Waiāri,” said Potiki.

'The Waiāri according to all of you is mana whenua Tapuika.”

She said she was concerned about the sustainability of the water supply, especially with the number of consents being granted for homes.

'It's not a never ending supply of water. The water levels are going down.

'I accept you are investigating it, but you are not looking at it from our point of view,” said Potiki of Te Puke.

'I do have issues with the water going away from here.

'[There are] so many developments in and around Tauranga, Pāpāmoa, outskirts of Pāpāmoa and this little Waiāri is going to be providing the water. Really? Sustainability. I don't see it.”

Speaking after the ceremony Potiki said: 'They [the council] considered the mana whenua.”

'How can you consider the mana whenua when the Waiāri is providing water, not for us, but for Pāpāmoa?”

It was supplying water to the 'huge developments” in Pāpāmoa and the Rangiuru Business Park but those things weren't 'benefiting mana whenua at all,” she said.

'I honestly do not believe it's sustainable.”

The clarifier tank at Waiāri. Photo: John Borren/SunLive.

Tauranga City Council commission chair Anne Tolley responded to Potiki's concerns in an interview after the ceremony.

'We understand that the local hapu, to whom those waters are sacred, want us to make sure that we are thinking about particularly the health and the sustainability of that water,” said Tolley.

'We perfectly understand their concerns that it's just going be used willy-nilly.

'When we talk sustainably [it's] about keeping those flows and keeping the health of the river and all the life that depends on it.”

The plant is designed to keep up with water supply for the next 30 years for up to 35,000 households. Tauranga City Council have a resource consent to take 60 mega litres a day but it wis currently taking between 5 to 10 mega litres, which equates to 5 to 10 million litres.

In terms of long term sustainability Tolley said there was a study underway through SmartGrowth looking at future water supplies.

'The [Bay of Plenty] regional council's done a lot of work about water take currently in the various catchments.

'But we do need to be talking about what happens next. The population is continuing to grow kiwifruit industry is continuing to grow and needs water.

'You can't stand still and as well as conservation, we do have to look to the future.”

Addressing the concerns about the water not being used in Te Puke, Tolley said: 'The two councils are working together.

'We have a joint ownership of this plant. So then each council makes a decision about where it distributes the water and how it uses it.”

Currently the Western Bay of Plenty District Council (WBODC) is not using water from Waiāri, water for the district is sourced from bores.

WBOPDC has a resource consent to use 25 per cent of the plants' water.

Western Bay of Plenty deputy mayor John Scrimgeour. Photo: WBOPDC.

Western Bay of Plenty deputy mayor John Scrimgeour said where the water was used was a longstanding concern of iwi and Te Puke people in general.

'Iwi have kaitiaki [guardianship] over the water so there's frustration for them that they see it as being used outside of their district,” he said

Scrimgeour said consultation processes were different 20 years ago when the project began and if it started today iwi would have been 'more intimately involved” in the discussions.

'As a community, and particularly the growth of kiwifruit in the last 20 years, they never envisaged how great the need for water for horticulture would become in the district

'That's a disappointment for people struggling to get consents for those sort of purposes, here in this wider Te Puke area to see water going outside for other use.”

Water Conservation

With the new water plant online, Tauranga people can't expect to have water restrictions lifted over summer.

Asked what changes can be expected to water restrictions over the summer, Tolley replied: 'None”.

'We can't take it [water] for granted. We do know that our streams are reducing in their flow.”

She said people see all the summer rain but the water that council takes is much older than 'a couple of summers”.

'Treated water, it's expensive to treat, it's treated for drinking, and we should be getting people to think about how they use that water for other uses.

'That's why the commission's really keen to look at how we make better use of rain water ... and also making better use of greywater,” said Tolley.

'There won't be an end to water restrictions but they might not be as severe depending on the summer.”

In 2005 TCC and WBOPDC started discussions with Waitaha and Tapuika iwi and the Te Puke community about plans to take water from the Waiāri Stream.

In 2010 the environment court granted resource consent for 60 mega litres a day until 2044.

Construction of the treatment plant and intake facility on the Waiāri began in 2018.

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