Cr Sophie Barker asked at a Dunedin City Council meeting yesterday what might happen if councillors pulled back on a previous call to accelerate Three Waters capital expenditure.
Council chief executive Sandy Graham said it would depend on which elements might be targeted.
However, she offered a broad answer covering some possibilities.
Ms Graham said the backlog in the deficit of renewing the network would continue to grow, there could be an increased risk of failure or lack of compliance with standards, and plans for facilitating city growth "might not be enabled".
"It’s hard to be definitive ... depending on which work you might decide not to do ... the market capability gets eroded, so our contractors would be affected.
"Our ability to retain and recruit staff would be challenged as well," Ms Graham said.
The draft budget for 2024-25 has a Three Waters capital spend of about $80 million — well up on the $48m allocated in year4 of the 2021-31 long-term plan.
However, the proposed spend did not come close to what an "unconstrained" Three Waters budget might look like.
Three Waters and transition general manager David Ward said that would likely be closer to "three times the size of this one".
