Akitio water: Tararua District Council working on issue

Akitio Beach residents ran out of water over the New Year period.

Tararua District Council is looking at options helping Akitio from experiencing further disruptions to its water supply.

The beach community was left without water after an issue just before New Year’s Day, with a post on social media explaining that it was an airlock affecting delivery of water to treated water tanks.

An increase in demand from holidaymakers had added to the problem which meant the water tanks could not recover quickly and the post asked people to conserve water.

Manager Roger Earp says the council was struggling to get enough water out of the spring and it was “still struggling”.

While he was unable to confirm when the problem first occurred, he says everything was full on December 24.

On the afternoon of December 30, the council posted on Facebook saying a team was investigating an interruption to the water supply.

It’s believed there was an increase in demand due to holidaymakers out at the beach community.

“We couldn’t extract and process enough water to meet the demand for the sheer number of people out at Akitio at the time,” Roger said.

Normally between nine and 20 people stay in the township which creates less of a strain on the supply.

Roger says the council had put in two new tanks, giving an extra 60,000 litres of storage capacity for treated water, but it wasn’t enough.

He says while he can’t definitively confirm it, he believes a number of power cuts may not have helped the situation.

“We weren’t able to process water obviously during the time of the power cuts and it put us behind.

“Once you get behind and you’ve got such a high demand, we just weren’t able to catch up.”

Roger says the council is doing things to further investigate exactly what is going on and work out the best solution to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

They’ve also been working with the local campground and the Akitio Ratepayers Association to keep people informed, and both have been “really helpful”.

Several staff members have been going out to Akitio most days since just before New Year’s Day to try to solve the problem and a tanker was provided as well as bottled water.

Some of the tanks have recovered, but as of January 16, not all of the tanks were full and the council was conscious of the approaching long weekend and the expectation of extra people at Akitio.

Roger says the council can only do so much and there is a requirement under the bylaw for tanks to be installed.

The bylaw states that: “storage tanks in Akitio Beach must be installed at the time of connection to the water supply system with a minimum capacity of 5000 litres”.

The council is encouraging people to investigate getting a tank if they don’t already have one between now and next Christmas.

“We’ll be as prepared as we can be but people can really help us and help themselves by having their own tank and having some of their own water available as well,” Roger says.

He believes it’s a community problem and council wants to work together with the community to help solve the problem.

Several options were being looked into, including measuring the demand in the township, which Roger says they will be getting onto in the next few weeks.

They’ll also be communicating with all the homeowners and providing them with advice.

He says a partnership between the council and homeowners is critical.

“The people that are out there, the homes out there, it’s critical that they play a role in ensuring they’re well provided for.”