Water and sewerage systems extension policy (WASSEP)

WASSEP is designed to provide a mechanism to extend town water into unserviced, usually rural areas, with an equitable apportionment of costs amongst beneficiaries.

An extension of town water under WASSEP requires the majority support of property owners benefiting from the extension and a commitment from benefiting property owners to contribute financially on a cost recovery basis.

Extensions are primarily intended to provide for domestic users in areas of poor ground water and not horticultural or agricultural water supplies.

Applications for water supply extensions will be assessed individually according to a number of factors including the:

• level of support from benefiting property owners
• quality and availability of bore water supplies in the area and
• availability of Power and Water funding.

New building developments and redevelopments in serviced areas, including within new subdivisions, place additional loads on Power and Water's existing water supply and sewerage systems.

WASSEP is designed to accommodate these loads from new building development in a fair and equitable manner through a system of common contributions from developers.

Under WASSEP, developers make contributions based on the anticipated load being placed on Power and Water’s water supply and sewerage systems (excludes headworks such as dams, bores, treatment works and water transfer mains).

WASSEP fees are detailed here.

Proponents of subdivisions are responsible for providing new local water supply and sewerage services to new lots, to meet the ultimate anticipated demand on that lot. Subdivision proponents may be required to undertake some augmentation or works offsite to facilitate the subdivision. Subdivision proponents do not pay WASSEP fees.

If a building development is taking place on an established or newly created allotment any additional water and sewer load created above the base loads or previously approved loads will incur WASSEP charges. Ordinarily each allotment is allocated 13 sanitary fixture units for sewerage and a potable water flow based on the existing service connection pipe size.

Where redevelopment occurs, eg where a house is being replaced by a multi-residential development, the building development may also trigger the need to upgrade or augment local water supply and sewerage services, eg where the fire fighting demands of the new building exceed the capacity of the existing water mains in the street.

In some cases, where it is economically viable and there are other benefiting land owners, a contribution plan may be formulated which will share the costs between the benefiting land owners.

Quotes for fees for developments and the application of WASSEP policy on building developments and subdivisions are available from Services Development.