Water resilience funding outcomes
The climate crisis is our generation’s biggest challenge, and it’s already an issue in Te Taitokerau. With predictions that on average we’ll see a hotter, drier Northland with more extreme events, ensuring our communities have enough water to get through these challenging times is an issue we must address.
The droughts of 2019/2020 exposed significant water poverty across Te Taitokerau in vulnerable rural communities without access to public water supply. This resulted in an emergency welfare response with the army brought in to deliver water to communities without town water supply.
As a result, Northland Regional Council established a Water Resilience Fund through the Long-Term Plan that provided $500,000 per year to build water resilience across the rohe. The fund prioritised the most vulnerable Northland communities that don’t have access to the water a person needs on a daily basis, a basic necessity that many of us take for granted.
Through a partnership between NRC and community providers, the fund enabled hapū to devise their own hapori-led solutions to get water infrastructure to where it’s most needed. This approach saw great progress to get water tanks of sufficient size, water pumps and filtration systems to comply with drinking water standards, and in some cases the infrastructure such as guttering so that rainwater can now be collected on site.
This project aimed to strengthen water resilience across Te Taitokerau. For Northland Regional Council, building partnerships and relationships with hapū is our commitment to ensuring that there are hapū led solutions to address the challenges that are ahead of us.
In 2024, Council established the Climate Resilient Communities fund, through which funding for water resilience in vulnerable communities is still a priority.
