Good News!
Napier City Council is soon to withdraw the chlorine it has been using to protect the public while the 460km of water supply network has been flushed, and corroded seals and pipework repaired.
The council informs us that the work should be completed and approved by Christmas when chlorine treatment will be removed.
If Napier residents can have safe drinking water free of chlorine treatment why can't Hastings? If the water-bottling companies don't need to treat the water they extract from the confined Heretaunga aquifer what's wrong with Hastings District Council's bores?
Hastings council's strategy appears to be driven by a fixation on the theory that the source water in the Heretaunga Aquifer is somehow "insecure" and council staff are focused on water treatment rather than drilling new bores in the secure, confined aquifer.
It all goes back to Havelock North's water contamination crisis. While the Regional Council's evidence demonstrated that lack of bore maintenance was a significant contributor, Hastings District Council's lawyers succeeded in convincing the Water Inquiry that it was more likely that surface contamination had permeated the thin layer of semi-confined aquifer in the Brookvale bore field.
In 2008 the regional council gave Hastings District Council 10 years to find an alternative water source in the secure confined aquifer. It was recognised that Brookvale could not support the rapidly growing population of Havelock North.
In October 2015 Brookvale Bore 3 had to be shut down when it was contaminated, and the council switched to Bores 1 and 2 for the town supply. The source of that contamination has never been identified.
Then in August 2016 a third of the population of Havelock North were poisoned when Bores 1 and 2 were contaminated by sheep dung.