IAWAI Water Services Strategy

IAWAIs plan is for $3bn of capital expenditure over the next decade. Does this include government subsidised funding such as that that will be used for the SWWTP ($500m) and water storage upgrade to the Ruakiwi Road facilities and the ~$500m upgrade to Pukete? Or is this $3bn of additional capital expenditure that will add even more to the debt burden of ratepayers?
If the latter, does that mean that Hamilton (predominantly) residents are going to be facing $3bn of additional debt on top of what council currently owes and, incidentally, can’t service?
Of the $3bn worth of additional debt – which needs to be serviced – how much is being spent on water meters? Indications are that this is in the vicinity of $250-300m just for the meters, which we – the ratepayer – have to also fund. Your $3bn is disappearing fast. Especially if we include the IT costs (extremely speculative at this stage) board of directors and executive management. All of which we would not have needed until the decision to create a separate entity for water and wastewater delivery.
Incidentally, stormwater – THE most problematic of the 3 waters – is retained by the council (not passed to IAWAI) but we will have to pay IAWAI to manage it. Talk about double-dipping.
Will the SWWTP be constructed in a modular fashion in order to spread out the capital cost, or is the plan to go straight in and build it all on day one? This is a particularly important point for me as indications had been made as to the strategy for construction, even though the site is in serious doubt.
Given the SWWTP location is questionable at this stage, how can anyone be certain of capital costs? Is it a case of fear of missing out on government loans that is driving this development?
Further on the point of the SWWTP, given that Peacocke has already cost the Hamilton ratepayer over $500m with hardly a house built – despite all the projections from 2017 that had thousands of homes built by now – if this is the rationale for the SWWTP, surely the failure of the Peacocke growth cell (and it’s not the only one) renders its construction an out and out waste of ratepayer money.
Which brings me to the entire narrative of Hamilton as a rapidly growing city. Council is generally using University of Waikato projections and these show growth of 1.3-1.5% per annum. This is nowhere near the fantastic growth figures used as justification for rampant borrowing and unfettered capital expenditure by Hamilton City Council.
I shall cut this short despite having a lot more to say, which means I will get my main point across.
In summary, I feel that this is just job creation for a (senior) bureaucrat class as well as creating a vehicle to facilitate more debt which we, the ratepayer, will be wholly responsible for. In the meantime, people who have no vested interest apart from their own salaries will continue to earn vast sums of money whilst reaming the average person for everything they can get.

No, these are my own personal views