"We are a water supplier, and our community has made it clear it wants us to find out how the contamination occurred, and to make sure it can't happen again," he said.
"While this work will be crucial for the inquiry, we would have done much of it anyway."
In terms of the costs related to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council investigation and prosecution, Mr McLeod said that these were costs that largely would not have been incurred had the regional council not opted to go down a prosecution path.
"While we are pleased the councils were able to agree to the withdrawal of the prosecution proceedings, we are still puzzled as to why the regional council made the decisions it did.
"Hawke's Bay Regional Council has no mandate to investigate the contamination of drinking water and no powers under the Health Act."
Hastings District mayor Lawrence Yule said he expected that any prosecutory action would be taken after all the evidence was released, adding that the council was prepared to face the consequences if it was found responsible.
"We believe, and we stand by this, that if actually we've been found wanting or it's our responsibility or something that has led to the cause of this inquiry that we will take the ramifications for that," he said.
Mr Yule said the council did not understand why prosecutory action was taken so early.
"It's been our long standing view that actually the regional council had plenty of opportunity to do their whole investigation and then make a decision as to whether to prosecute us or not. They had a six month window from the time they started their investigation which is well into March," he said.
"In the end that's been superseded because the Hawke's Bay Regional Council withdrew the prosecution action after the first couple of days of the hearing and fined us and we agreed to that course of action."
When asked what could have been done better Mr Yule said in his view, although the Hastings District Council, Hawke's Bay Regional Council and Hawke's Bay District Health Board each have different regulatory responsibilities, the agencies should have approached the issue together.
"We had started off a process of all working together to get to the bottom of what happened and then at a later date to determine if actions needed to be taken by one party against another that could be done on common information and data. But the regional council very early on decided that no, they were going to prosecute us anyway, which was outside that original scope of work," he said.
"All we're trying to point out is that that's $270,000 worth of costs that we've had to fund on a prosecution which was subsequently withdrawn by them...so that's a lot of money to spend on something that actually didn't need to happen like that. And that's not to mention their costs on their side in pursuing that as well."
Earlier this week, the Hawke's Bay Regional Council released figures showing that it had spent just over $1 million on internal salary and external costs related to its Havelock North water contamination outbreak investigation and the ongoing government inquiry.
About $445,000 was spent on its investigation to determine whether the contamination was in part or wholly the result of resource consent conditions not being met.
Hawke's Bay Regional Council resource management group manager Iain Maxwell said HBRC staff were currently focused on preparing for the Havelock North Water Contamination Government Inquiry which starts on Monday.
"The most important factor is to determine the cause of the contamination, and to ensure there is no repeat of what happened in August 2016, which affected so many people," Mr Maxwell said.
Having said that, Mr Maxwell said HBRC has a statutory obligation under the Resource Management Act to investigate any alleged breaches of resource consents and prosecute where necessary, which is what was done in relation to the HDC Brookvale bores 1 and 2.
Now complete, the investigation saw the regional council drop its two charges against the Hastings District Council for unlawful water takes because that council conceded the breach of resource consent conditions and agreed to not contest two infringement notices, resulting in two fines totalling $1000.
Having reached more than $1 million already the Hawke's Bay Regional Council staff defended the costs of this investigation and inquiry into the Havelock North water contamination.
Mr Maxwell told a full council meeting earlier this week that although the prosecution was dropped against the Hastings District Council the time and expense involved in getting the information was still useful.
"We initially launched the investigation in August last year when we were told there was a widespread contamination of the aquifer, and we wanted to investigate whether that was correct," he said.
After extensive sampling across a large area, they confirmed that this was not the case and that the aquifer was not contaminated, Mr Maxwell said.
Although the work involved was costly, it came within estimates with internal staff costs provided for in council budgets, and external costs funded from the 2016-17 budget provisions and the surplus operating position from 2015-16.
"The costs are about where we thought they would be - the work has been expensive but no one else in the region had the capacity or capability to do it," Mr Maxwell said.
He said the regional council was the only agency that had the expertise to gather the information and that the results obtained by the investigation would feed into the Government inquiry.
"Although we didn't end up prosecuting [the Hastings District Council], this information will be critical for the inquiry," he said.
In September last year it estimated the campylobacter outbreak cost the Hawke's Bay District Health Board $380,000.
At the time chief executive Dr Kevin Snee said more than half of the cost - $216,000 - was due to staff illness.
Extra costs incurred included $66,000 for the intensive Care Unit, $24,000 for community health surveys and $41,000 for medical supplies/resources.
It is still unclear how much of the total amount ($855,000) the Hastings District Council spent will be passed on to ratepayers but Mr Yule said council has insurance for prosecutions against the council and is "hopeful" that a significant proportion of what was lost during the prosecution will be recovered.
Mr McLeod said that the expenditure incurred was being sourced from within existing budgets approved by council.
Up until January 26 the regional council had spent $637,310 on the inquiry; a large chunk of which came from Chen Palmer law firm legal fees that stood at $413,867 this week.
A Napier City Council spokesman said most of its assistance came as "in-kind support" and included deployment of six staff, a number of Civil Defence volunteers and loaning of trucks. The installation of a stand pipe and tap on Marine Parade cost about $1400 and the cost of sending trucks to Havelock to help flush the system was about $550.
Central Hawke's Bay District Council costs were not available.
