In many jurisdictions, the provision of water and wastewater services has evolved substantially over the last decade. The impacts of climate change and the prolonged drought in Australia have raised additional challenges for the industry relating to water resource planning and reliability of supply. This has, in turn, led to significant investment in new infrastructure to improve reliability of supply and reduce the reliance on climate dependant sources across most of the Australian states. Although not necessarily driven by the same imperatives, New Zealand’s water and wastewater sector is facing similar challenges.

These challenges and changes will create a more dynamic water and wastewater industry, and may lead to the creation of broader water markets that provide stronger incentives for future investment and innovative servicing solutions.

Recent industry reforms, and current changes have included:

1. Ownership reform – focused on differing ownership structures being adopted, including privatisation in the United Kingdom, corporatisation of Government-owned authorities and various other government owned arrangements;
   
   
2. Service delivery reform – service providers looking at outsourcing the provision of some or all services, entering into alliance arrangements to provide services or entering into BOOT schemes with private sector operators to provide specific infrastructure and services;
   
   
3. Structural reform – examining recent reforms such as the amalgamation of smaller authorities, vertical & horizontal disaggregation of the water and wastewater supply chain, the introduction of water trading mechanisms, and the introduction of third party access regimes (NSW); and
   
   
4. Regulatory reform – focused on the adoption of an independent economic regulator to oversee monopoly water and wastewater service providers’ service levels and pricing arrangements.
   

What makes the SAHA team different is its significant practical experience in the water and wastewater industry, both urban and rural, and across many jurisdictions. This provides it with the ability to draw upon decades of specialised industry based experience and ensures that the advice provided to clients is practical, robust and focused on the appropriate issues.

The SAHA team also has government and consulting experience which means that it understands the issues facing private and public entities as well as the policy makers and regulators.

SAHA has a proven track record in advising governments, water businesses, regulators and private sector service providers in relation to the economic, regulatory and commercial aspects of these, and other, issues affecting the water and wastewater industry.

Click here to read more about the Water and Wastewater Group's experience.

For further information, please contact Kumar Padisetti (Australia) and Michael Pead (New Zealand)

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