Mr Gutwein used his keynote address to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in Hobart to announce he had called an urgent meeting with councils to discuss, what he called, an infrastructure crisis. 

Twenty-one Tasmanian towns remain on “boiled water” alerts and four towns, all in the state’s North-East, have been issued with “do not drink” alerts. 

The rate of sewer overflows into the environment has also been found to be seven times the national average. 

Last year, TasWater released its 10-year plan to upgrade its infrastructure, this included having no “boil water” alerts within two years.

Councils have been shareholders in TasWater since 2009 when they handed over water and sewerage assets. 

Mr Gutwein said councils had put dividend payments ahead of investing in water and sewerage infrastructure. 

But TasWater chief owner representative and Northern Midlands Mayor David Downie said the work could not be done overnight. 

“Councils use the return on decades of community investment into water and sewerage infrastructure to aid in the maintenance and renewal of other community assets infrastructure,” Cr Downie said.

“Councils aren’t backing away from the task that needs to be done but with TasWater, we are working responsibly and as fast as possible.” 

Mr Gutwein said councils needed to take ownership of the problems as the situation continued to deteriorate. 

“In a first-world country in the modern age, this is simply unacceptable,” he said. 

“This is critical public infrastructure owned by all Tasmanians, and as Tasmanians we have a right to expect that our water and sewerage bills, first and foremost, pay to fix the problems that we all know exist.

“The state government considers that we’ve reached a crisis point and is no longer prepared to stand by and let this situation continue.” 

TasWater chairman Miles Hampton said that while there was a significant problem in the state, a turnaround would take a long time. 

“Infrastructure’s just getting old – yes some of it hadn’t been looked after as much as it should have been, but some of it had been,” Mr Hampton said.

“If, for example, we were to stop today making any payment to our owners, we’d probably reduce the time frame for fixing the infrastructure from the planned 10-year time frame to maybe about an eight-and-a-half year time frame. 

“If we were to receive any assistance from the state or federal governments, we certainly could move faster.”