Yes, we definitely needed a truly independent national Water Regulator. But the problem in August 2016 was that Hastings District Council ignored repeated requests by the local Water Regulator to raise bore heads above ground after the previous outbreak in Havelock North in 1998. For years the local Water Regulator [the District Health Board] had let them get away with it. The rest of us are now paying a high price for that incompetence. Read more about it
“Gone are the days when it appeared the Ardern-led Government could walk on water. Government’s decision to make the Three Waters reforms mandatory for councils was an act of breathtaking determination. Councils will be required to hand over management of their drinking water, wastewater and stormwater to one of four new publicly-owned entities. Earlier offers to opt-out have been abandoned. Local councils will portray this as an unconscionable seizure of assets that had been built up by generations of ratepayers…” Read the full article
QUESTION: Why would you spend $178 million
just to end up with permanently chlorinated water in Napier? In 2019 councillors voted unanimously to
investigate going chlorine-free in Napier.
Napier’s mayor says she
is going to go “broken record” on the chlorine issue. READ the article here.
But consultants estimate it would take 20
years and $300 million for Napier to go chlorine-free.
Instead, the consultants seem to prefer the
option of spending an estimated $178 million to reconfigure the network and
build storage tanks and chlorine treatment plants while we sort out whether or
not we can go chlorine-free.
Many Napier residents want exemption from the
mandatory chlorination being imposed on New Zealand and a return to the
pristine artesian water we used to have on tap until May 2017.
Napier’s groundwater had never been
permanently chlorinated water until May 2017.
Similarly, the Dutch stopped chlorinating
their groundwater sources after tests demonstrated the biological stability of
their groundwater which provides drinking water to half the country. Their
river water is another story, however.
After 1974 the Dutch government spent billions
of dollars over several decades developing a method to purify their heavily
contaminated river water so they could provide safe drinking water to the rest
of the Netherlands.
Napier will not need to spend that money
however – our artesian water is from the secure confining layers of the aquifer
so why would we spend $178 million estimated by the consultants just to end up
with permanently chlorinated water in Napier when we could achieve exemption
from mandatory chlorination sooner and for a lot less?
Going chlorine-free should be no more expensive than the permanently
chlorinated option. READ the article here.
The council claims that the dirty water problem in Napier is “caused by a combination of biofilm built up in the network, which gets shaken loose and comes out through the pipes, and Napier drawing its water from a source high in manganese, which when oxidised, turns black”. [HBToday 21/12/19]
What they don’t mention is that the harmless biofilm gets oxidised by the chlorine. Stop the chlorine!
NCC has always maintained an ongoing programme for clearing the buildup of the harmless biofilm from the network suburb-by-suburb over a five-year period, turning off the supply in each street and “pigging” the mains, followed by a heavy dose of chlorine, flushing the sludge down the roadside gutters. The never-ending complaints about discoloured water are the result of the council decision in May 2017 to constantly disinfect the network with chlorine, on a permanent basis. Since then the harmless biofilm has been constantly oxidised by the chlorine disinfectant and, instead of getting flushed into roadside gutters once a year, the sludge gets flushed into our household taps every day. This has to stop. Perhaps the council could fast-track their programme to use pressure transducers to test the pipe network in the worst affected areas. If problems are detected, fix them. Once the technology demonstrates the network is robust, then the council could stop adding chlorine to water supplies for Tamatea, Onekawa and Pirimai. Surely it’s time to do the “fair” thing for those residents who have suffered so badly for two-and-a-half years.
Pauline Doyle, Spokesperson, Guardians of the Aquifer.
Step aside Wayne Jack [CEO Napier City Council]. The majority of the new councillors want Napier’s water supply back to normal – pristine artesian drinking water with no chlorine added - and they received a strong mandate from the community on 12th October. Our new Mayor Kirsten Wise will be contacting Lianne Dalziel, Mayor of Christchurch. The new council has a two-phase plan for action. Mayor Wise says “there is currently no legal requirement to chlorinate our water and the decision does not lie with the dedicated water regulator”. In the power vacuum at Napier City Council it appears that our elected representatives have been constantly misled by the staff – councillors at NCC never made the decision to permanently chlorinate. “It has been forced upon us after an extraordinary event and in my view, after two years, our time has come to push back and make the decision for ourselves.” Cr Annette Brosnan and Mayor Kirsten Wise say the council needs the community behind it with its decision making on water. Read the full article.
The results are in: Sandra Hazlehurst retains her hold on the mayoralty with 13,188 votes. Damon Harvey won a total of 10,130. During the campaign mayoral candidate Damon Harvey stated: “Under my leadership we will look to partner Napier as they investigate the Christchurch model.” If elected, he planned to start the removal of chlorine from Hastings’s water supply, beginning with Whakatu. "My aim is to see if we can restore chlorine free water in Whakatu as soon as practically possible.“ In March 2018 Hastings District Council commissioned a brand new bore for Whakatu but immediately chlorinated the water against the wishes of the community. Whakatu’s source water is from the secure, confined aquifer. The new bore has been certified secure by the Drinking Water Assessor which means it does not need any treatment. Guardians of the Aquifer sent a questionnaire to the two Hastings mayoral candidates. Sandra Hazlehurst failed to respond but according to a recent news item she believes that chlorine free water "is not an option”. It was a close call in the Hastings mayoral race.Read the full article.
This is what has been going on under Sandra Hazlehurst’s leadership: Multi-million dollar Water Central proposal revealed.
And this is where it all began - in Havelock North - thanks to serious failings by Hastings District Council under mayor Lawrence Yule’s leadership in August 2016.
Under the “no fault/no blame” inquiry set up by the National government in 2016 HDC dodged liability for the gastro outbreak which made 5,500 people seriously ill and was associated with the death of seven people. According to ACC the gastro outbreak was “not an accident”. That’s why ACC claims have been declined. ACC will only pay out if someone takes court action and is able to prove “criminal negligence”. Read the full article.
We shouldn’t have to carry heavy water containers home from public taps. In a modern city like Napier we should have clean drinking water on tap in every household. Napier is not a third world city. Napier’s water was chlorinated temporarily in February 2017 – it was never meant to be permanent.
In an odd way Napier is “fortunate” to have problems with water discoloration: we can SEE there’s something wrong with our drinking water. If you can’t bathe in it or wash your clothes in it then why would you drink it? Plumbers are doing a roaring trade installing filters and repairing or replacing hot water cylinders. But desperate people who can’t afford filters are having to cart water home from public taps or buy bottled water knowing it’s from the same unique aquifer which provides 100% of the municipal supplies to Napier and Hastings.
The Ministry of Health removed Napier’s “secure bore” status on a temporary basis in 2017 while the bores were serviced, upgraded or de-commissioned. Secure bore status for Napier’s seven operational bores was reinstated in 2018.
There is currently NO LAW requiring permanent chlorination. The council could safely remove the chlorine right now. What’s stopping the council from immediately removing the chlorine from our drinking water?
STOP THE CHLORINE EXPERIMENT NOW!
Have you signed the petition for chlorine-free water?
Email Pauline Doyle p.doyle@hotmail.com to get a copy and help us gather signatures.
Napier and Hastings should never have been chlorinated. Only the two Brookvale bores managed by Hastings District Council were contaminated on 6th August 2016.
Christchurch will have 98% of their water network chlorine-free again by end of June 2019 at a cost of $35 million. HDC is spending $45 million and NCC is spending $40 million - just to end up with chlorinated water. Chlorine treatment is expensive.
Twenty years ago 80 people in Havelock North were poisoned from campylobacter. The enquiry into that gastro outbreak determined that contaminated surface water leaked in to the equipment chamber above the well heads and poured down into the well heads through loose seals on the manifold, mixing with the clean source water from the aquifer every time the pumps came on. The poorly-constructed wellheads were two-and-a-half metres below ground-level. Between 1998 and 2016 Hastings District Council was constantly told by Drinking Water Assessors to raise the well heads above ground-level to prevent another outbreak. They failed to do so and the same thing appears to have gone wrong on 16th August 2016 during the major weather event with power outages. HBRC promptly carried out E.coli tests on all the private bores in the vicinity of the two suspect council bores in Brookvale Road, including the bore which services 120 staff at Te Mata Mushrooms. No E.coli was detected in the private bores and no-one got sick drinking from the private bores in August 2016. The fact is only the two bores managed by Hastings District Council were contaminated.
Well-drillers carried out two extensive investigations of the contaminated bores for the Regional Council but their findings were never made public - for some reason the Inquiry Panel declined to call HBRC’s expert witness on these investigations and the media never got to hear the full story. The 2016 Inquiry Panel subsequently decided that the contamination was probably not caused by a combination of events similar to the 1998 contamination. Instead they decided the fault probably lay with an “insecure” water source. The belief that the aquifer was somehow “insecure” has subsequently been popularized around Hawke’s Bay and the whole of Hastings and Napier has been lumped in with Havelock North and chlorinated.
We have two petitions, one for HDC and one for NCC.
Email Pauline Doyle p.doyle@hotmail.com to get a copy and help us gather signatures.
Thank you Stu Wilson - what a beautiful gift to your community in Whakatu – a brand new private bore with no chemicals added, to be shared with the people of Whakatu. Last year Hastings District Council commissioned a brand new council bore for Whakatu - then promptly chlorinated the pristine artesian water coming up from the secure confined aquifer. Why?! The council faced fierce opposition when they announced their plan at the public meeting in Whakatu, but they ignored the locals and went head and chlorinated. Let’s hope Stu Wilson gets 100% support for his Petition for Chlorine-Free Water for Whakatu so people who have health problems with chlorinated water can convince the council to remove the chlorine from their community supply.
During a recent workshop in Christchurch run by chlorination proponent and advocacy group Water New Zealand, Canterbury Medical Officer of Health Alistair Humphrey challenged the proposal to strip councils of their responsibility for water provisions under major new changes being discussed by the government in the wake of the Havelock North outbreak.
Dr. Humphrey said Water NZ appeared to have a “fundamental misconception” about regulation, telling them responsibility for enforcement, monitoring and compliance lies with the Ministry of Health, not individual district health boards.
“We have a national system already in terms of compliance, monitoring and enforcement. It needs improving. Setting up a new body isn’t necessarily going to solve the problems, it will just pass them on to someone else at great expense.” Read the full article.
