Three waters

Our environment comes first

Hamilton’s drinking water is safe, meets all applicable standards, has multiple barriers against potential contamination and is monitored continuously.

Raw water is drawn from the Waikato River into our single water treatment plant, where it is treated to provide high-quality drinking water.

To protect our river system and provide for everyone along it, Hamilton has limits on how much water we can take from the river. Our current consent expires in 2044. At current usage, we’ll need more than our consent allows before then, so we have to get smarter about using water wisely and reducing waste.

We’re mindful of the impacts of climate change - changes in rainfall patterns and longer periods of drought or rain can impact our ability to take water from the river because our intake pipes are at a fixed level.

Everything we do is underpinned by the framework of Te Mana o te Awa – recognition of the vital importance of our river. We must ensure the health and well-being of the awa is protected. Only then can we provide for our community and enable other uses of water.

Managing our network

We operate, maintain, and upgrade our treatment plant, water storage reservoirs, pump stations, hydrants and pipelines and commercial water meters. Our water supply network services more than 53,000 households and 5,500 commercial, industrial, and rural premises.

We supply water to Waikato District Council for several thousand properties in its southern districts, and more than 100 properties in the Waipa area. Monitoring and managing risks to the quality and safety of water is an important part of this service.

We plan for network and management reviews, renewals, upgrades, increases in capacity and leak detection. An upgrade for our treatment plant will be needed to meet increasing demand from growth. This will also support our resilience during peak demand times and to cope with unplanned issues.

Households and businesses rely heavily on water so it’s important that we provide a timely response when something goes wrong. In the last financial year, we received 1739 callouts for leaks, pressure issues or other non-urgent requests, and resolved them in a median time of 7 days. For urgent callouts our median response times was 38 minutes, with a median time to resolving it of two hours.

Our environment comes first

Good management of Hamilton’s wastewater means we protect the environment so we can look after our people. We maintain and invest in our wastewater systems and have enough capacity in our network for planned growth.

Our network includes around 900km of pipes, more than 130 pumping stations and six major pipeline bridges. All the wastewater from more than 64,000 connections flows to our Pukete Wastewater Treatment Plant and is treated before being released into the Waikato River.

Waikato Te Awa has special cultural and historical importance to iwi. Te Ture Whaimana o Te Awa o Waikato (Vision and Strategy for the Waikato River) has a vision for a future where a healthy Waikato River sustains abundant life and prosperous communities who, in turn are all responsible for restoring and protecting the health and wellbeing of the Waikato River and all it embraces, for generations to come.

Everything we do is underpinned by the framework of Te Mana o te Awa – recognition of the vital importance of water. We must ensure the health and well-being of the water is protected. Only then can we provide for our community and enable other uses of water.

Managing our network

Our wastewater is more than just the waste from flushing our toilets. It includes all the ‘used’ water from household kitchens, bathrooms, and laundries, and from business and industry. To protect our environment and public health we need to contain and manage wastewater.

It’s a team effort between council and the community to make sure we don’t put the wrong things into our wastewater system, to improve and maintain our pipes and pumping stations, build resilience and storage capacity for weather events and peak flows, and support sustainable residential and economic growth.

There’s no single solution, but our Wastewater Master Plan has a range of strategies that work together to deliver a system that works for Hamilton.

These include planned maintenance and renewals, new capital investment, inflow & infiltration (I&I) reduction programmes, interceptor duplications, on-line storage volume using larger pipelines, education programmes for the public, and a bulk wastewater storage programme.

Our environment comes first

Hamilton’s stormwater services protect people and properties from flooding and manage the quality of our stormwater.

Our stormwater system is only for rain, which flows into gutters and into the pipe system before being released into the Waikato River and other Hamilton waterways.

Stormwater is not treated so its important our systems and processes minimise the effects of stormwater on the environment.

Our stormwater network includes collection, conveyance, treatment, and discharge services. We have more than 700km of pipes in a system which includes ponds, wetlands, and open watercourses, to collect and release rainwater into the city’s waterways.

Our activities include bylaw development, erosion control, flood hazard mapping and detailed catchment management planning. Our work assists in achieving the Vision and Strategy for the Waikato River by helping to protect aquatic habitats, minimising scour, erosion, and flooding and improving bathing water quality.

Managing our network

We operate and maintain the stormwater connections for more than 64,000 rateable properties, replacing aging infrastructure, and building new infrastructure.

We face increased legislative and regulatory requirements for our existing network and to support growth in our city.

We are addressing this through establishing stormwater infrastructure in greenfield areas, erosion control works, retrofitting and new treatment devices in brownfield areas and continuing integrated catchment management planning.

We hold a consent to discharge stormwater from urban areas to various receiving environments, including the Waikato River. Under this consent we are required to continually improve our stormwater management over time and to monitor stormwater discharges and environmental health.

In 2021 we allocated $10.7 million over 10 years for the development of Integrated Catchment Management Plans. This program will complete the city’s Integrated Catchment Management Plans, flood modelling and collection of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data.