Show Notes
Tawara o te Wai – Water New Zealand’s podcast series
Drought – what happens when water demand exceeds the ability of suppliers to meet the needs of communities? How do we ensure people get access to safe drinking water while not depleting water from our rivers and the wider environment?
Wellington’s real risk of water shortages this summer has brought home the need to prepare for more extreme weather and build better long-term water resilience.
The blame for the capital’s water woes has been on the city’s aging leaking infrastructure. But the impact of climate change also played a big role in Wellington’s water shortages these past months.
It’s now recognised that the longer drier months and extreme rainfall events will become the new norm into the future. That’s why planning for extreme weather and drought is now a key challenge for water utilities both here and overseas.
In our latest Tawara o te Wai podcast, hosts Jon Reed and Hannah Edmond spoke to Wellington Water’s chief executive Tonia Haskell and Meyrick Gough, the technical director of South East Water in the UK – a utility that supplies drinking water to 2.3 million people in the southeast of England.
There, the climate in recent years has been affected by longer, dryer spells and recent droughts That’s sparked the development of detailed resilience planning focusing on the impact of more extreme weather scenarios.
Meyrick explains the work underway and we also talk about how vital it is that communities are brought into the picture.
More from Water New Zealand
“When you go through these co-design projects, I'm yet to see one that fails. I'm yet to see one that hasn't delivered for the community.” These were the words of water engineer Troy Brockbank, in a recent Water New Zealand Tāwara o te Wai podcast exploring the question many water sector professionals are grappling with - how we move beyond consultation and build genuine partnerships with mana whenua? As water organisations navigate reform, there’s a risk that engagement with iwi becomes treated as a compliance exercise or a simple tick-box requirement. Hosts Jon Reed and Emily Afoa are joined by Sarah Nolan, Water New Zealand's 2025 Young Stormwater Professional of the Year, whose article in the July/August Water Journal challenged the sector to think more critically about its approach to iwi engagement. Sarah says that consultation with iwi and mana whenua can easily become more procedural than purposeful. A genuine partnership and achieving better outcomes requires a shift towards co-design, shared accountability, and relationships built in at the beginning of a project. Also joining the discussion is Troy Brockbank, who played a key role in developing Water New Zealand's Cultural Significance and Importance of Wai training module and its recent transition to an online format. Together, Sarah and Troy discuss the practical steps water professionals can take to strengthen partnerships with mana whenua in their day-to-day work. They explore barriers to collaboration, the opportunities presented by current water reforms, and how co-design with iwi can deliver better project outcomes.
Water infrastructure has been identified as the single most significant climate risk in Aotearoa New Zealand, according to the latest Climate Change Commission National Climate Change Risk Assessment report. In this edition of Tāwara o te Wai, Jon Reed and Hannah Edmond discuss the implications and the impact on the water sector with climate change adaptation specialist James Hughes. They ask what decisions do we, as a sector, need to make around infrastructure, urban development, drought and flood risk.
For many New Zealanders, flooding has shifted from a distant risk to a lived reality. In Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland the severe floods of 2023 helped spark a transformation around the understanding of flood risk. In our latest podcast, hosts Jon Reed and Emily Afoa talk to Auckland Council flood risk leaders Nancy Baines and Nick Brown, about how communities now understand a lot more about flood risk. But how well prepared are they to cope with what’s now an inevitability for many – flooding and its aftermath?
As we ramp up investment in much needed water infrastructure, it’s vital that we get good return and that the investment prioritises economic opportunity, environmental impact and social wellbeing. In this episode of Tawara o te Wai, Jon and Emily speak with Jeff Whitty from the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission – Te Waihanga about what is needed to ensure an effective, efficient and resilient water infrastructure future.
New water entities are being set up across the country. Faced with challenges around affordability and the need to address the long term infrastructure deficit, it’s been said that the success of the Local Water Done Well reforms will largely hinge on the experience, calibre and courage of new Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) board members. In this episode of Water New Zealand’s Tawara o te Wai podcast, hosts Jon Reed and Emily Afoa discuss the water sector governance reform with two experienced watersector leaders - a former water utility CEO and past-President of Water New Zealand, Raveen Jaduram and Water New Zealand’s chief executive, Gillian Blythe.