Ruapehu District Council and The Lines Company ensure access to clean drinking water in Ohakune

Ruapehu District Council and The Lines Company are working together to ensure that people in Ohakune are not without clean drinking water. Photo / Bevan Conley

Ruapehu District Council (RDC) and The Lines Company (TLC) are working together to ensure that anyone in Ohakune affected by the TLC planned three day rolling power outage and council's precautionary water safety notice are not without clean drinking water.

Council chief executive Clive Manley said that RDC and TLC have an established
relationship between management to enable an efficient and effective response in
case of unusual events such as this occurring.

"Having a pre-planned outage coinciding with a weather event initiated water safety notice is very unusual and rare," Manley said.

"Both organizations have been working to ensure that everyone affected has access
to either bottled drinking water or the power outage information to allow them to
boil enough water to cover any outage windows."

TLC have bottled water available on the corner of Ruapehu Rd and Shannon St for
anyone that requires it.

RDC has staff available to help anyone with special needs requiring additional help.

Ohakune New World have confirmed that they have received fresh stocks of bottled water and are confident that they can meet demand for people who prefer that to boiling water for drinking.

TLC chief executive Sean Horgan said they are having the outage to replace an
aging power line and to strengthen backup supply to Ohakune.

"We had scheduled the outage during the school holidays as one of the customers
affected is a local school," Horgan said.

"As a planned event all property owners were sent a notice by mail advising of the
outage."

Outage information showing what is happening and what is planned is
on Cruise FM and also on the TLC website.

Everyone has power back on at night with most properties re-energised by
4.00pm.