Help shape New Zealand’s wastewater future

The Water Services Authority - Taumata Arowai (the Authority) has begun consulting on proposed national wastewater environmental performance standards.

The proposed standards would apply to public wastewater networks, which serve just over 4 million people in New Zealand and are primarily owned and operated by local councils.

The proposed standards are expected to:

• result in significant cost and time efficiencies for consenting of wastewater treatment plants, in a way that responds to the bow wave of reconsenting of wastewater infrastructure over the next decade

• strike a balance between the cost of upgrading wastewater infrastructure while ensuring that public health and environmental outcomes are achieved

• create national consistency to give councils the certainty needed to plan and fund the significant infrastructure upgrades that much of New Zealand’s aging public wastewater networks requires

• set clear expectations about treatment quality to assist with community engagement about different options to manage wastewater

• ensure that, as a sector, there is good quality wastewater performance data to identify what’s working well as well as opportunities for improvement.

Public consultation on the proposed wastewater standards is open until 5pm on Thursday, 24 April 2025.