Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967

The Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967 is a short New Zealand statute with a long title that says almost everything about its purpose: it is "an Act to enable the Rotorua City Council to make provisions for the control of the tapping and use of geothermal energy in the City of Rotorua." It received royal assent on 30 June 1967 and, according to Wikipedia's entry on it, remains current legislation.

On its own the Act is a small piece of local law. Its importance comes from where it applies. Rotorua is one of the few cities in the world built directly on top of an active geothermal field, with geysers, boiling springs and mud pools inside the urban area, and with homes, hotels and a hospital drawing heat from the ground beneath them. The decades either side of 1967 were a period of rapidly growing private drilling, and within twenty years that drilling had pushed some of the city's most famous geysers toward collapse, prompting one of the most dramatic interventions in New Zealand's environmental history: the forced closure of hundreds of geothermal wells in the late 1980s.

This article explains what the Act is, the geological and cultural setting it was written for, how geothermal use in Rotorua developed, what went wrong, how management changed after 1967, and how the resource is managed today under the Resource Management Act 1991 and its successors.

The Act at a glance

What "empowering" means

In New Zealand, as in other Westminster systems, a local council can only do what Parliament allows it to do. An "empowering" Act grants a specific authority a power it would not otherwise have. The long title of the 1967 Act says the power granted was to make provisions to control the tapping and use of geothermal energy within the city. In plain terms, it gave the city council a legal basis to regulate who could drill into the geothermal field under Rotorua and how the heat could be used.

The Act's operative sections are not reproduced here. Readers who need the exact wording, such as the form the council's controls could take or any penalties, should consult the official text on the New Zealand Legislation website or NZLII. What can be said with confidence is the problem it was aimed at, and what happened in Rotorua over the following decades, which the rest of this article covers.

The setting: a city on a caldera

Geology

Rotorua sits inside the Rotorua Caldera, a large volcanic depression formed in a major eruption in the Pleistocene. Wikipedia's article on the caldera dates its formation to about 240,000 years ago (plus or minus 11,000 years), and its article on the wider volcanic zone gives about 225,000 years for the main eruption; both point to a quarter of a million years or so. The caldera is about 22 kilometres across at its widest. The eruption that formed it ejected more than 340 cubic kilometres of rhyolitic material known as the Mamaku ignimbrite, an event with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7. Lake Rotorua now fills much of the caldera, with the rhyolite dome of Mokoia Island near its centre.

The caldera is one of several large volcanic centres in the Taupō Volcanic Zone, a belt about 350 kilometres long and 50 kilometres wide running from Mount Ruapehu in the south-west to Whakaari / White Island in the north-east. The zone has been active for at least two million years and is still rifting apart, by about 8 millimetres a year at Taupō and 10 to 15 millimetres a year at the Bay of Plenty coast. That rifting thins the crust and brings heat close to the surface, which is why the zone contains numerous geothermal fields.

How the geothermal system works

Bay of Plenty Regional Council, the agency now responsible for managing the resource, describes the basic mechanism. Rainwater soaks into the ground, is heated at depth by magma, and is trapped in porous rock. It can rise along faults to emerge as hot springs, geysers and mud pools, or it can be reached by drilling. Most of the region's geothermal systems lie within the Taupō Volcanic Zone.

The regional council recognises four broad types of surface feature:

The regional council counts about 1,500 geothermal surface features in Rotorua, and about 3,000 across the Bay of Plenty region. Many of the internationally significant ones are within 20 kilometres of Rotorua's city centre, including Whakarewarewa, Kuirau Park, Waimangu and Tikitere.

Whakarewarewa and Pōhutu

The best-known features are in the Whakarewarewa valley on the south side of the city. Wikipedia's account describes about 500 pools, mostly alkaline chloride hot springs, and at least 65 geyser vents, each with its own name, of which seven are currently active. Most of the active geysers sit along a common fissure on Geyser Flat, so the behaviour of one affects the others.

The star is Pōhutu Geyser, which erupts up to 30 metres high, roughly once an hour and up to 20 times a day, with eruptions lasting about 10 to 20 minutes. Wikipedia describes it as the largest geyser in the southern hemisphere. Its neighbour, Prince of Wales Feathers, usually erupts just before it.

These features were not only tourist attractions. They were the visible sign of the health of the whole system beneath the city, and their decline in the 1970s and 1980s became the key evidence that the system was being overused.

People and the resource before 1967

Māori use

Te Arawa Māori settled the Rotorua district in the fourteenth century. Ngāti Whakaue established themselves at Ohinemutu on the lakeshore, a settlement that local organisers say has been continuously inhabited since 1365. Te Puia, a pā at Whakarewarewa first occupied around 1325 according to Wikipedia, was known as a stronghold never taken in battle.

For generations, Māori used geothermal heat and water for cooking, bathing, heating, ceremony and healing. The regional council describes these as low-impact customary uses that have occurred for hundreds of years. Geothermal systems are regarded as a taonga, a treasure, and the relationship of Māori with geothermal resources is now explicitly recognised in regional policy.

The spa town

European interest in Rotorua grew in the nineteenth century, driven largely by the geothermal features. According to the regional council, extractive use began in the 1870s as the area became a tourist destination. In 1880, under what is known as the Fenton Agreement, Ngāti Whakaue leased land to the Crown so that the government could offer 99-year leases on their behalf. The Thermal Springs District Act 1881 gave the government exclusive rights to buy and lease land containing hot springs, lakes or rivers. In the 1880s the government set out to establish Rotorua as a spa resort, and spring flows were modified for bathing.

Tourism in this period centred on the Pink and White Terraces, which were destroyed in the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera. The railway and the Rotorua Express train, begun in 1894, connected the town to Auckland and drove rapid growth.

Rotorua became a borough in 1922 and a city in 1962, five years before the Act that bears its city status in its name.

The rise of private bores

The regional council's account of the twentieth century is concise. Demand for geothermal heat grew after the 1930s and 1940s. After energy shortages in the early 1950s, private extraction of heat and fluid became common. Residents and businesses drilled shallow wells, typically 50 to 200 metres deep according to the regional council (Wikipedia gives 20 to 200 metres), and used the hot fluid to heat homes, hotels, pools and businesses.

By the 1970s more than 1,000 bores had been drilled. The regional council states that the first oil shock led to rapid, unregulated growth in demand in the late 1970s. When imported oil became expensive, free heat from the ground looked even more attractive.

Why a dedicated Act?

The national framework

New Zealand had begun legislating for geothermal energy well before 1967. The Geothermal Energy Act 1953 governed the use of geothermal resources nationally and granted rights to use them; Wikipedia's article on geothermal power in New Zealand notes that it granted water rights that were later generally replaced by resource consents under the Resource Management Act 1991. The Geothermal Energy Regulations 1961 defined the role of "geothermal inspectors." These national laws grew up alongside the first large-scale geothermal power station at Wairakei, near Taupō, which opened in 1958 as the second large-scale geothermal plant in the world after Larderello in Italy.

A local problem needing local powers

Rotorua's situation was different from Wairakei's. At Wairakei, a single state project drilled deep wells in a largely rural area to make electricity. At Rotorua, hundreds of private owners were drilling shallow wells in back gardens, motel car parks and commercial properties, in the middle of a city, into the same system that fed its geysers and springs.

The 1967 Act's long title shows what Parliament decided: the Rotorua City Council should have the power to make provisions for the control of the tapping and use of geothermal energy in the city. In other words, regulation of this urban resource was to be placed in the hands of the authority closest to it, the one that already controlled building, drainage and planning in the city.

What the Act could and could not do

An empowering Act gives a power; it does not guarantee that the power is used effectively. The record of the following two decades suggests that the controls available under local regulation did not stop the growth in drilling and extraction. By the 1970s, more than 1,000 bores existed, and the late-1970s surge in demand was described by the regional council as "unregulated." Whatever controls were made under the 1967 Act, they did not prevent the overuse that followed. By the 1980s, central government had to step in directly.

The crisis: geysers in decline

What was observed

During the 1970s and early 1980s, many features in the Whakarewarewa valley, Kuirau Park and Arikikapakapa declined significantly, according to the regional council. Specific examples from Wikipedia's account of Whakarewarewa include:

Wikipedia's article on Pōhutu Geyser notes that activity at Whakarewarewa declined before the closures of the late 1980s.

Why it happened

A geothermal system is a plumbing network. The geysers and springs are the outlets at the top, fed by hot water rising from depth. Each bore that draws hot water out of the shallow aquifer lowers the pressure and water level in that aquifer a little. One bore makes no visible difference. A thousand bores, especially where the used fluid is not returned to the aquifer, can lower pressure across the whole field enough that features at the surface lose their supply. A geyser needs a particular combination of water supply, heat and pressure in its underground plumbing to erupt, and when that combination is disturbed, eruptions can become irregular or stop entirely.

Worked example (hypothetical)

To see why so many private bores mattered, consider one hypothetical household system. Suppose a shallow bore delivers 0.5 kilograms of hot water per second, and the household's heat exchanger cools it by 40 degrees Celsius before discharge. Using the specific heat of water, about 4.18 kilojoules per kilogram per degree, the heat extracted is

0.5 kg/s × 4.18 kJ/(kg·°C) × 40 °C ≈ 84 kilowatts.

That is a lot of heat for a single home, and the fluid used to deliver it, 0.5 kg each second, adds up to about 43 tonnes per day (0.5 × 86,400 seconds ≈ 43,200 kg). Multiply that by hundreds of bores, many running continuously, and the total withdrawal from the shallow aquifer becomes large compared with the natural flow that fed the springs. The figures here are illustrative only, not measurements from any real Rotorua bore.

The government steps in

Early guidelines, 1980

According to the regional council, in 1980 the Minister of Energy and the Rotorua District Council (Rotorua had become a district in 1979) announced guidelines that included no new bores within 1.5 kilometres of Whakarewarewa. The Rotorua Monitoring Programme began in 1982 to collect systematic data on the aquifer and surface features.

The bore closure programme

The decisive step came in the mid-1980s. The regional council describes a government-enforced bore closure programme beginning around 1986, which imposed a total ban on geothermal fluid extraction within 1.5 kilometres of Pōhutu Geyser and no increase in heat take elsewhere. It estimates that this cut withdrawals from the field by about 60 percent.

Wikipedia's account of Whakarewarewa adds detail, dating the closures to 1987 to 1988:

The regional council's figures for shallow bores in use are that they fell from about 370 to about 140 after the programme. The two sets of numbers measure slightly different things, total wells closed versus bores remaining in use, but they tell the same story: within a few years, the city went from hundreds of active shallow bores to a much smaller, controlled number.

The royalty regime mentioned on Wikipedia worked as an economic lever alongside the legal ban. Bore owners outside the exclusion zone faced charges for the fluid and heat they took, which made many existing bores uneconomic and led their owners to close them voluntarily.

Recovery

The response was clear. Wikipedia reports a "pronounced recovery" in the geysers and hot springs after the closures. Kereru Geyser's recovery has been linked to the sudden drop in well draw-off in 1987. Te Horu's vent, silent since 1972, began overflowing again in 1998. Pōhutu's activity increased noticeably after bores within 1.5 kilometres were shut, according to its Wikipedia entry, although some scientists have raised concerns that its more regular eruptions might eventually change how the system behaves.

The regional council's monitoring data show the aquifer recovering from 1986 to 1994. Since then, it says, the system has entered a sustained phase of equilibrium, in which the management regime of extraction and reinjection, and long-term climate, are the main drivers of change.

Lessons of the closures

The Rotorua experience is often cited, informally, as an example of a resource that recovered once use was reduced. Several lessons stand out:

• Shared resources need system-wide limits. Each bore owner acted reasonably in their own interest, but the combined effect damaged features that everyone valued.
• Monitoring makes action possible. The Rotorua Monitoring Programme, started in 1982, provided the evidence that withdrawals were driving decline and later showed that the closures were working.
• Distance rules can be blunt but effective. The 1.5-kilometre exclusion zone around Pōhutu was simple to understand and enforce.
• Price signals matter. The royalty regime closed more wells outside the exclusion zone than the ban closed inside it.
• Recovery can take years. Some features responded quickly; Te Horu took about a decade after the closures to overflow again.

From 1967 to the Resource Management Act

Reorganisation of local government

The 1967 Act was written for the Rotorua City Council. Since then, New Zealand's local government has been reorganised more than once. Rotorua became a district in 1979, and Wikipedia records its city status as revoked in 1989. The current territorial authority is Rotorua Lakes Council, while geothermal management in Rotorua now sits mainly with Bay of Plenty Regional Council.

The Resource Management Act 1991

The most important change came with the Resource Management Act 1991, which received royal assent on 22 July 1991 and came into force on 1 October 1991. The RMA replaced 59 earlier Acts and amending Acts and revoked 19 regulations and orders. Its single purpose, set out in section 5, is to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources.

For geothermal energy, Wikipedia's article on geothermal power in New Zealand states that the RMA became the principal legislation controlling geothermal resource use, and that the Geothermal Energy Act 1953 was made redundant by it.

Under the RMA, as summarised by the regional council, regional councils manage:

• the taking, use, damming and diversion of geothermal water;
• discharges of geothermal water and gas; and
• the taking and use of geothermal energy.

Resource consent is required to construct a new geothermal well, take geothermal water and energy, take energy only, or discharge water by reinjection or to the surface. Decisions must consider effects on the system, on other users, on significant surface features and on cultural values.

Customary Māori use

The RMA makes a specific exception for Māori customary use. The regional council explains that no consent is needed for use under tikanga Māori that benefits tangata whenua communally and has no adverse effect on the environment, citing section 14(3)(c) of the RMA. Section 8 of the Act requires decision-makers to take into account the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Relationship to the 1967 Act

Wikipedia lists the Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967 as still current. In practice, however, the main regulatory tools for geothermal use in Rotorua today are RMA instruments: regional plans and resource consents issued by Bay of Plenty Regional Council. The 1967 Act is best understood as an early, local layer in a regulatory history that has since moved to the regional and national levels.

How Rotorua's geothermal resource is managed today

The planning documents

Geothermal management in the Bay of Plenty works through a hierarchy of documents.

The System Management Plan was developed with input considered by a joint panel of councillors and haukāinga, local people of the area. It is intended to guide changes to the regional plans. According to the regional council, Plan Change 11, which would put Rotorua geothermal provisions into the Regional Natural Resources Plan, is on hold because the government suspended plan changes pending legislation to replace the RMA. The council continues to implement the System Management Plan because it is an operational document rather than a statutory plan change.

Current use

The regional council's description of current use in Rotorua is:

Geothermal fluid is used for bathing and wellness, and for space and water heating in homes, commercial properties, Rotorua Hospital and municipal facilities.

Two techniques in the table are central to keeping use sustainable.

• Reinjection. After heat is extracted, the cooled fluid is pumped back into the aquifer instead of being discharged at the surface. This keeps pressure and fluid volume in the system and reduces the effect on springs and geysers. The regional council says about 90 percent of takes now reinject fluid.
• Down-hole heat exchangers. A closed loop of pipe is lowered into a well, and clean water circulates through it, picking up heat from the surrounding geothermal fluid. Because no geothermal fluid is brought to the surface, this takes heat without taking water.

Monitoring

Bay of Plenty Regional Council, working with GNS Science, NIWA and universities, monitors consents, the geothermal aquifer, groundwater, surface features, heat flow, fluids and gases. For surface features it records attributes including size, water temperature, ebullition (boiling), water level, flow, clarity, colour, odour and chemistry. The data are published through the council's environmental data portal and feed into long-term models of the system. Research on microbial life and geochemistry in springs is carried out by GNS Science and the University of Waikato through the 1000 Springs project.

Economic and cultural stakes

Rotorua's geothermal features are central to its identity and economy. The regional council cites tourism in Rotorua as worth $799 million a year in 2016/17, indirectly providing about 18 percent of employment. Geothermal habitats are also ecologically rare. Stream sides, heated ground and hydrothermally altered ground are classed as "Critically Endangered" ecosystem types in New Zealand, the Bay of Plenty holds about a quarter of the country's geothermal vegetation, and prostrate kānuka, which grows only in geothermal areas, is listed as threatened or at risk.

Hazards of living on a geothermal field

Living on top of an active geothermal system brings hazards that any regulatory regime has to consider. The regional council lists:

The council's guidance includes setbacks and controls on development, restricted access to known risk areas, checking with councils before building or earthworks near surface features, and building and maintaining geothermal wells to best-practice standards, including casing integrity testing. Rotorua's nickname "Sulphur City" refers to its hydrogen sulphide emissions; the regional council says health studies have not shown known health issues from geothermal gas, though gas in enclosed spaces is a real danger.

Rotorua in the national picture

Rotorua's geothermal resource is managed for heat, bathing, tourism and conservation, not electricity. That sets it apart from the other big story of New Zealand geothermal energy.

Wikipedia's article on geothermal power in New Zealand notes that long-term steam drawdown has reduced output at some generating fields, that some plants are capped to let fields regenerate, and that reinjection is now common. The same principle that rescued Rotorua's geysers, taking less and putting back more, applies to the power stations too.

Looking ahead

Replacing the RMA

New Zealand's resource management law is in transition. The Natural and Built Environment Act 2023 and Spatial Planning Act 2023 were passed to replace the RMA but were repealed in December 2023 by the incoming government. According to Wikipedia, Parliament passed the Planning Act 2026 and the Natural Environment Act 2026 on 22 September 2026, replacing the RMA, with the new laws expected to take effect in 2029. The regional council notes that until the new system takes effect, existing regional plans, consents and consent conditions remain in place. How geothermal resources will be handled in detail under the new laws will matter a great deal for Rotorua.

Open questions

• Allocation. How much heat and fluid can be taken without harming surface features, and who should get it, remain the central questions of the System Management Plan and future plan changes.
• Māori rights and interests. The geothermal resource is a taonga, and the role of mana whenua in managing it, through joint panels and Mātauranga Māori monitoring, is still developing.
• Climate. The regional council lists long-term climate, along with the management regime, as a main driver of change in the system.
• Legacy law. Statutes such as the 1967 Act remain on the books, and how they fit alongside the new planning laws is a question for lawyers and legislators.

Timeline

The city above the field

The people who depend on Rotorua's geothermal resource are a growing urban community. The 2023 census counted 55,326 people in Rotorua's urban area, up 13.1 percent since 2013, and the June 2025 estimates were about 58,500 for the urban area and 78,000 for the wider territorial area. Rotorua has the highest proportion of Māori of any New Zealand city.

That growth matters for geothermal management. More homes, hotels and public buildings mean more potential demand for cheap geothermal heat, at the same time as the surface features that draw visitors need protection. The figures in the current-use table, about 130 consents and more than 400 homes heated, are small compared with the 1,000-plus bores of the 1970s, which shows how firmly the post-1980s regime has held demand in check.

Questions of land and ownership also run through the story. According to Wikipedia, in 1993 the Crown settled a Treaty of Waitangi claim in Rotorua by agreeing to return gifted lands that were no longer needed for their original purpose. The 2024 System Management Plan, developed with a joint panel of councillors and haukāinga representatives, is one sign that the relationship between councils and mana whenua over the geothermal resource itself is now built into how it is managed.

Common misconceptions

"The 1967 Act saved Rotorua's geysers." Not by itself. Bore numbers kept rising after 1967, and the late-1970s surge in demand was described by the regional council as unregulated. The geysers recovered after the government-enforced closures of the mid-to-late 1980s, which cut withdrawals by about 60 percent.

"Rotorua generates geothermal electricity." It does not. The regional council states there is no geothermal electricity generation or industrial direct heat use in Rotorua. The big power stations are elsewhere in the Taupō Volcanic Zone.

"Geothermal heat is unlimited, so using it does no harm." The heat at depth is vast, but the fluid that carries it to the surface is not. Rotorua shows that taking fluid faster than the system can supply it can damage surface features within a couple of decades.

"The 1967 Act is the main geothermal law in Rotorua today." Day-to-day regulation now runs through the RMA, the Regional Policy Statement, regional plans, resource consents and the 2024 System Management Plan.

"Māori need consents for traditional geothermal use." Communal use under tikanga Māori that benefits tangata whenua and has no adverse environmental effect does not need a consent under section 14(3)(c) of the RMA, according to the regional council.

Frequently asked questions

What does the Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967 do?

Its long title says it enables the Rotorua City Council to make provisions for the control of the tapping and use of geothermal energy in the City of Rotorua. It gave the local council a legal basis to regulate geothermal drilling and use in the city.

When was it passed?

It received royal assent on 30 June 1967.

Is it still in force?

Wikipedia lists it as current legislation. In practice, geothermal use in Rotorua is now mainly controlled under the Resource Management Act 1991 and the regional council's plans and consents.

Why did Rotorua need its own Act?

Rotorua's geothermal field lies under a city, and by the 1960s many private owners were drilling shallow wells into it. That called for local control by the authority responsible for the urban area, which national geothermal legislation alone did not provide.

What happened to the geysers?

Many declined during the 1970s and early 1980s as more bores were drilled. After the government-enforced closure programme of the mid-to-late 1980s, including the cementing of 106 wells within 1.5 kilometres of Pōhutu, many features recovered. The aquifer recovered from 1986 to 1994 and has since been in a broadly stable state.

How many bores are there today?

The regional council reports about 130 consents for the take and use of geothermal water and energy, about 40 down-hole heat exchangers, and about 90 percent of takes reinjecting fluid.

Who manages the resource now?

Bay of Plenty Regional Council, under the Resource Management Act 1991, through the Regional Policy Statement, the Rotorua Geothermal Regional Plan, the Regional Natural Resources Plan and the Rotorua Geothermal System Management Plan approved in April 2024.

Why is Rotorua called "Sulphur City"?

Because of the hydrogen sulphide gas released by its geothermal system, which gives parts of the city a smell often compared to rotten eggs. Sulphur Point, next to the Government Gardens, has dense sulphur deposits.

What is reinjection, and why does it matter?

Reinjection means pumping geothermal fluid back into the ground after its heat has been used. It keeps pressure and fluid volume in the aquifer, which protects springs and geysers and reduces subsidence. About 90 percent of consented takes in Rotorua now reinject fluid.

Where can the Act's text be found?

On the New Zealand Legal Information Institute's consolidated acts collection and on the official New Zealand Legislation website.

Summary

The Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967 gave the Rotorua City Council the power to control the tapping and use of geothermal energy in a city built on top of an active geothermal field. It came at a time of rapid private drilling, which continued to grow. By the 1970s more than 1,000 shallow bores had been drilled, and after the oil shock demand rose further. The result was a serious decline in Rotorua's geysers and springs, and in the mid-to-late 1980s central government imposed a ban on extraction within 1.5 kilometres of Pōhutu Geyser, cementing more than a hundred wells and closing more through royalty charges. Withdrawals fell by about 60 percent and the system recovered.

Since 1991, geothermal resources in Rotorua have been managed by Bay of Plenty Regional Council under the Resource Management Act, with consents, widespread reinjection, monitoring and, since 2024, a System Management Plan that places Māori relationships with the resource at its centre. The 1967 Act remains on the statute book as an early chapter in that story: an attempt to give local government the tools to manage a shared resource that turned out to be more fragile, and more valuable, than anyone in the 1960s had appreciated.

Sources

• Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967 (Wikipedia)
• Rotorua City Geothermal Energy Empowering Act 1967, text (NZLII)
• Bay of Plenty Regional Council: Rotorua geothermal system
• Bay of Plenty Regional Council: Managing our geothermal systems
• Bay of Plenty Regional Council: Geothermal
• Bay of Plenty Regional Council: Geothermal surface features
• Bay of Plenty Regional Council: Geothermal hazards
• Geothermal power in New Zealand (Wikipedia)
• Resource Management Act 1991 (Wikipedia)
• Whakarewarewa (Wikipedia)
• Pōhutu Geyser (Wikipedia)
• Rotorua (Wikipedia)
• Rotorua Caldera (Wikipedia)
• Taupō Volcanic Zone (Wikipedia)
• Ohinemutu (Wikipedia)