Tararua District Council investigating fault at Eketāhuna water treatment plant

The water treatment plant at Eketāhuna.

A fault which caused the Eketāhuna water reservoir to run low is being investigated by Tararua District Council.

On Monday, May 29 the council issued notices asking residents to conserve water.

Council group manager of infrastructure Chris Chapman says the issue stemmed from the water treatment plant’s scada/telemetry system.

He says this gave operators information over the weekend that the plant was operating as normal.

“However, in reality, the plant had shut itself off and the reservoir and reticulation (pipe) network slowly ran out of water.”

Chapman says the water treatment plant was manually restarted on Monday morning and the system began refilling.

However, he says recharging the reticulation network can take several hours so it meant significant disruption to Eketāhuna.

As of Tuesday morning, the system had recharged and the treated water reservoir was at around 40 per cent.

While residents were still being asked to conserve water early last week, issues like a lack of water pressure from taps should have been resolved.

Chapman says the council is committed to identifying and addressing all contributing factors.

“We are investigating how this happened with our supplies, including why no alarms were sent to staff and how we can ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Pahiatua residents were also asked to conserve water last month after a leak was discovered on the main water pipe connecting Pahiatua’s water supply to the reservoir

The issue was resolved within a week.