I was starting to think that I might be having second thoughts about the Government’s Three Waters reforms even before the disaster that hit Auckland on Friday night.

It was last week when I was looking at the map online showing which bays in Lyttelton Harbour are considered safe for swimming, on the basis of water quality.

If you’ve looked at it recently, you’ll know that it’s dominated by the red markers - which show that an area is unsuitable.

Nevertheless, the map is a tiny snapshot on water quality here in Canterbury. And when I looked at it last week, I started to think that maybe - just maybe - the Government does have a point.

And maybe we’ve been a bit too quick to start the table thumping over Three Waters - which is the stormwater, drinking water and wastewater services that are currently the responsibility of your local council.

The Government doesn’t think local councils are up to the job of running stormwater, drinking water and wastewater and, like it’s done with the public health system, it wants to centralise the whole thing with four water arthritis around the country making all the decisions.

It’s not just councils not being up to the job - they also don’t have the money that’s needed to get the water infrastructure up to scratch.

Now the aspect of the Three Waters that most of us have been upset about is this hostile takeover the Government wants to do of all the stormwater, drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.

In Christchurch, for example, it’s talked about paying $120 million for about $8 billion dollars worth of infrastructure assets. Which is absolute nuts. I’ve thought it along and I still think it now. 

That aspect of Three Waters is like paying an as-is/where-is price for a house that’s had all the earthquake repairs done.

But I’m starting to think that perhaps we’ve been too focussed on the financial and the stripping of local control aspects of Three Waters, when we should really be accepting that our water infrastructure here in Canterbury is not as gold-plated as we like to think it is.

I was starting to think that last week after looking at the map with all the unsafe swimming areas in Lyttelton Harbour. But, since Friday night’s events in Auckland and the impacts we’ve been seeing and hearing about, I reckon we need to take it as a bit of a wake-up call.

If the water infrastructure in our largest city couldn’t cope with that rain on Friday night. What hope does anywhere else have of coping?

Because, like Auckland, our water infrastructure is nowhere near adequate to deal with the more extreme weather we are going to see because of the ocean getting warmer.  Which means more moisture lurking around for storms to pick up and dump on us.

Can you imagine what things would be like if we had a rainstorm like Auckland had on Friday night? Nowhere in Canterbury would cope. We’d be sitting ducks. Just like anywhere in the country would. Just like Auckland was on Friday night.

Not that the Three Waters reforms would fix things overnight. If everyone had a change of heart and the Government pressed go tonight, it’d be years before the investment that’s needed to prepare our infrastructure for these sorts of events was made.

This is not me going into bat for the Government and suddenly waving the flag for Three Waters. But what I'm saying that after what we’ve seen happen in Auckland, we need to take the blinkers off and really start to think about how we are going to protect ourselves from these types of extreme weather events - which are happening more often and will continue to happen more often.

And if that means giving Three Waters a second chance, and not writing it off as a government takeover - as I have, and as you possibly have - we need to get real, take the blinkers off, and think about how some aspects of the Three Waters reforms might actually be a good thing.