Pauline Doyle, Ken Keys: It's been a year - Let's get drilling!

Pauline Doyle

Giving evidence at the Water Inquiry hearing on June 28, Australian water quality specialist Dr Dan Deere said a lot of money had been spent trying to understand what was happening in the Brookvale area yet it is "still unknown exactly where last August's contamination came from".

Dr Deere highlighted the core issue when he said: "We know you can have secure groundwater in theory, but you can't be sure a bore has not had failings or would not be affected by nearby activities." [Hawke's Bay Today 29/6/17]

Read more: Doyle and Keys: A new source of safe drinking water for Havelock North

A year on and still the question remains: did the council's own bores in Brookvale Rd "have failings" last August which poisoned 5500 people? We can't be sure, because Hastings District Council failed to investigate its contaminated bores.

Instead, the council has been telling us that something is going wrong with the Heretaunga aquifer. Last November Hastings District Council publicised the results of tests by GNS Science which indicated that "young water" was found in a number of the council bores. "Young water" is just surface water that is getting into the water supply somehow.

The obvious first thing to check thoroughly is the council infrastructure - the bores, pumps and valves.

It's time we called their bluff and checked whether the council's own bores are self-contaminating.

Hastings District Council was warned in 2008 that drawing the town supply for 15,000 people in Havelock North was "stream depleting", and that it had to relocate to a new secure water source elsewhere by 2018.

The council approved a $4.9 million project in 2009 to do just that. It could have been completed before last year's gastro crisis, but some penny-pinching person at the council decided it was "not a sound investment" and in 2012 they abandoned the project. The council withheld this information from the government Inquiry. ["Axed Bore Project Comes to Light" hbtoday 17/6/17]

In April, Lawrence Yule informed the public that Hastings District Council had budgeted $12m for water, saying that $7m was for water treatment, and $5m for new source water and that the council would continue to use Brookvale. The regional council need to remind the district council that the consent granted in 2008 was for 10 years, and only 10 years.

The Brookvale borefield is no longer considered secure. Since April Guardians of the Aquifer have repeatedly asked about plans for an alternative source specifically for Havelock North.

At the submission hearings on their Long Term Plan, the CEO tried to use the recent finding of "young water" in its Whakatu supply to justify the council's decision back in 2012 to abandon the $4.9m project for a new municipal supply for Havelock North.

Firstly, the council didn't know about "young water" in Whakatu back in 2012, so that argument is invalid. They need to stop using "young" water to justify council inaction. And stop trying to assert that the whole aquifer is collapsing beneath our feet. If there is something wrong with the council bore in Whakatu then it's time it was thoroughly investigated and tested by an independent well-driller and pump specialist.

Most of the water in the confining layers of the Heretaunga aquifer originates from rainfall and snowmelt in the Kaweka Ranges, which finds its way into underground "streams" of fine silts and gravels deep within the substrata. The natural filtering process can take up to 50 years before this water reaches the Heretaunga Plains.

Secondly, the term "young" water simply means surface water is getting in to the bores which have been tested by GNS. Is the bore at Whakatu allowing surface water to enter, causing a "transient formation" in the groundwater?

How old is that council bore? If the top of the well-casing has rusted, then surface water can get in to the annulus of the bore and, when the pump turns on, get sucked down the annulus and mixed with the pure water drawn up from the confined aquifer, which has been naturally filtered over the last 50 years.

If E.coli tests return a positive reading it will be from the surface water, not the aged water in the aquifer. Water which has been through a natural filtering process for 50 years will be free of bacteria, unless well-casing failure allows contaminated surface water into the system.

Cynics would suggest that it has suited Hastings District Council to keep trumping us with the mysterious "young water" card: By blaming the aquifer the council shifts the spotlight from the failings in the district council's own infrastructure, management and governance, and onto the regional council.

This has been going on for a whole year. It's time to stop passing the buck and start drilling.

Pauline Doyle and Ken Keys, Spokespersons, Guardians of the Aquifer. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz