Water Meter Trial

IAWAI planning for a water meter pilot in Waikato District

IAWAI – Flowing Waters, the joint waters company formed by Hamilton City Council and Waikato District Council, is running a pilot programme to help shape future decisions on residential water meters.

Waikato District Council households already have water meters – these were installed in 2017. The water meter pilot includes testing upgrades to a small number of meters in Te Aakau.

Te Aakau has been chosen because it’s location will allow IAWAI to test the technology in a rural setting. The trial will focus on automated meter reading technology, which provides more accurate and timely water-use data. It will help us understand the benefits of upgrading existing meters and inform future decisions about water management in our district.

Why are we trialling upgrades?

To test the performance of automated meter reading in a live community setting.
To understand how the technology can improve efficiency and reduce manual servicing costs.
To gather data on customer experience and water-use patterns.

What about Hamilton?

At the same time, Hamilton City is running its own pilot with around 200 voluntary households in Hamilton East, where residential water meters have not yet been introduced. That pilot is about testing installations, customer feedback, and potential costs for a future city-wide rollout. The cost of this trial is being funded by Hamilton City Council. Find out more about the Hamilton City pilot.

What this means for Waikato district households?

Only a small number of connected properties in Te Aakau will be part of the Waikato district pilot. Those in the pilot will be contacted directly.
There will be no new charges as part of the trial.
Data from the trial will help us understand how automated meter reading could improve services in future.
The trial has been funded by Waikato District Council within existing budgets.

Looking ahead

The Government has set a five-year transition for councils to move away from property value-based charging for water. Waikato District Council is already ahead of the curve, with residential water metering in place. This pilot is about making sure our systems remain fit-for-purpose, efficient, and able to support sustainable water use for our communities.

FAQs

An asset-owning CCO would own all of the water and wastewater assets that are currently owned by the Council. This would give the CCO greater power (and responsibility) to manage the operation, maintenance and regular replacement of network components that have worn out over time. An asset-owning CCO would also be responsible for setting fair charges for the services that they provide, and in the case of water and wastewater, this will be subject to checking by the NZ Commerce Commission.

Council is very strongly focused on ensuring affordability of our water services. This is a top criteria that we will be using when assessing any options for new models of service delivery.

There is no new government funding available to assist us with the Local Water Done Well changes, but we are able to use some remaining funds from the previous water reforms process.

However, one new factor is that the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA) will now be able to lend significantly more money to new Water CCOs, and this might help us to spread the debt for new projects over longer timeframes.

The WSDP will include a range of information about the current state of our water network assets, as well as long range financial projections and any proposals for changes to our water services delivery model needed to ensure financial sustainability by 2028.

The law says that it has to be submitted to the Ministry by September 2025, however it has to be adopted by council first. So, June is a realistic target date for adoption, post consultation, along with the Long Term Plan.

Yes, the final recommendations will be included in consultation, with the community given the opportunity to feed back during April and May 2025.

We can change operations over to the new model whenever we like. The government requirement is that our model is financially sustainable by September 2028.

Stormwater
Drinking water
Wastewater

Stormwater is categorised differently from drinking water and wastewater. This is largely because stormwater can't be charged volumetrically, so it's harder to set a user charge rather than a rate.

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Last updated 29 August 2025, 01:16 pm