This story out of the USA rang a few bells with me:
The Sandy Hook Water Association was established in 1965 by residents in rural southern Pennsylvania, ten or so miles outside the small borough of Chambersburg. The inhabitants discovered a natural spring in the mountainous terrain perched above their community and took it upon themselves to construct a system of pipes and plumbing to carry the spring water down the mountain to their homes below.
The system was 100% natural — no electricity nor pumps, just elevation producing natural water pressure flowing down the mountain.
The residents kicked in $750 and then paid about $25 per year for the supply. They looked after the repairs, maintenance and upgrades of the system themselves. And the water was about as pure as it gets:
The New York Times published data on contaminants in the water in a 2012 series on water pollution which showed it was exceptionally clean. 47 of the 54 contaminants tested for were not even traceable….a technician once sent to the community to take water measurements told him he wished he could get readings this clean from his processing plants.
But in 2006 somebody, and nobody knows who it was, laid a complaint to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) about the potential healthcare risks of the system and from there it all unwound:
By the time the DEP was done with Sandy Hook and the system was decertified in 2023, the community had spent over $800,000 combined to comply with the onerous regulations imposed on them… Those costs included installing new pipes, mechanized filtration systems, building a filter building and pumping chlorine into the water, among other things.
The residents finally could not cope with the never-ending demands. Now they’re trying to dig wells for each house, a process costing tens of thousands of dollars and not always successful. Even tougher given how many are retirees or on fixed incomes. And all for nothing. What’s even worse was that nobody in the system supposedly in charge of DEP was able to help:
“We have turned to the chain of politicians elected by us at the local, state and federal level. Other than lip service and hearing how the state bureaucrats cannot be controlled we have not received any help. We are begging to have our story told. We are begging to be heard.”
Really lets you know who is running the nation. As another resident put it at the closure:
“To see what has happened to that system that our fathers put together for our community, it makes me want to cry, it’s beyond heartbreaking”
The story caught my attention because it’s so familiar to a local situation I’ve been dealing with for several years now in the case of our district water scheme and which I wrote about a couple of years ago in a small example of National’s failures:
Before the Clarke administration left office they passed legislation that would tighten up considerably on water schemes in general (Drinking-water Standards for New Zealand 2005 (Revised 2008)). Throughout the nine years of the Key administration the implementation of this moved closer and closer to rural water schemes.
It finally reached our district in 2018, when all the farmers of our district were called to a meeting held by the local Council to discuss the fate of our scheme.
The system was designed by the Council in the early 1980’s and then built largely by the farmers. From 1984 it was providing a gravity-fed, year-round, drought-resistant water scheme. To farmers like my Dad it was a god-send after decades of faffing around with springs, wells, dams, crude flitration systems and pumps.
And now we were told that the regulations had finally caught up with us and the system would require millions to upgrade to the new standards and even then, the houses would have to be disconnected from the supply, pushing us fifty years back into a past of spring, wells and pumps. This despite individual farms having steadily added increasingly better filtration systems to back up the system’s original ones.
We’re still working through this and may yet save our system, at least for the farms if not for house water use. But the latter will mean installing wells, pumps and so forth, just like the Sandy Hook folks, and just as wasteful and pointless. I should also add that our local Council people have been very good about this, which is good compared to the poor bastards in the USA.
But central government? Pfft – whether run by National or Labour.
No Minister 
Ahhh yep…drinking water, its the perfect storm of arse-covering, grift and midwittery…after all, who would argue that they don’t want safer drinking water.
I was one of the experts for the Havelock North enquiry…during the course of which it became very obvious that the Hearing Panel didn’t really care about understanding the factors which actually caused the contamination, only about increasing bureaucracy to administer a system capable of making sure butts were suitably attired in the future. After all, nothing is more embarrassing to a Polly than having to fake condolences for dead granny.
Subsequently, implementation of the enquiry fundings has become a never ending stream of grift, firstly for the big engineering consultancies (Beca, PDP, Stantec, Aurecon etc) who are licking their lips at a 30+ year ‘pipeline’ of work and latterly for the natives who have never seen a gravy train they didn’t want to climb on board. As an example, I happened to be at Stantec offices in Welly one time and actually overheard a meeting room fully of big shots laughing about the future prospects of their watery engineering folks and reminding everyone to make sure they didn’t skimp on estimates for the cost of admin and works they were supplying to TA (which was just being established at the time).
So now we have an army of overly renumerated midwits at TA imposing ridiculously onerous compliance requirements on Councils (..but, then again, who internally at Council is going to push back on stuff that will help polish up your CV for a cushy job at one of the 10 water entities). I see the latest is that the Christchurch and Waimakariri Councils have to chlorinate all water sources…even those derived from wells screened 150+ m bgl accessing water recharged a long time (literally…its been age-dated) before Kupe got blown off course.
To me the water industry in NZ has been entirely taken over by rent seekers. But still, I guess no different from climate, renewable energy, mataraunga, transport, sustainability and health and safety larks…offering nothing of intrinsic value but a great trough to wallow in until the music stops.
Certainly can’t beat them….so trying to make sure I nab my share of the spoils…..
Sounds about right. BTW, has any reporter ever asked you or other experts about this, because I’ve never seen or read of it.
We are in the same boat, scheme installed in 1960s paid for by local farmers which transformed farming in the area.Primarily stock drinking water and dairy shed use with 29 properties connectedand about 80 people using it for domestic use. Despite Damien O Conner promising that regulation would be appropriate to risk we have been sucked into the Taumata Arowai black hole. Pinning our hopes on ACT/National – both Simon Court and Maureen Pugh have said that small schemes like ours will be exempted from the regulations, I live in hope but will believe when I see it. Everyone on the scheme is aware that the water comes from an open catchment and make their own choices as to whether to treat or not.
Interesting. Haven’t heard about our local National MP on this and as I said in my original post that I referenced in this one, a small example of National’s failures, National basically just let the original 2008 Helen Clark legislation move outward from the cities and hit us. Obviously we should have been more aware of it too, but sheesh, that’s what our MP’s are also for. They should have been looking out for this on our behalf: