Pauline Doyle, Ken Keys: Getting council back on track

Pauline Doyle

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.

Bore 3 was re-opened when Hastings bores struggled to supply Havelock North at the height of the dry summer. The Government Inquiry has since determined that the Brookvale bore field has poor artesian pressure, is not in the confined aquifer, and is no longer considered secure. Bores 1 and 2 have already been abandoned.

Hastings District Council's Ten Year Plan in 2009 approved $4.9 million for Project 202091 "New Supply at Whakatu & Rising Main to Havelock North" to be completed early 2015 (a year before the gastro crisis). If the project had gone ahead it could have saved a lot of heartache and millions of dollars for Hawke's Bay ratepayers. Unfortunately the project was abandoned by 2012.

In June this year the CEO, Ross McLeod, informed us that the council had decided that funding a new source for Havelock North was "not a good investment" and they decided instead to "build on what we've got" using the Lyndhurst/Frimley bore field. GNS has subsequently identified "young" water in some of the Lyndhurst bores.

We have had no response to requests that the Regional Council investigate whether Lyndhurst Bore 5 and nearby bores have rusted and are leaking surface water into the bore field.

On 10th June this headline appeared in Hawke's Bay Today "WATER TEAM IN CRISIS". Then in August we learnt that, under former Mayor Lawrence Yule, the CEO had his employment contract extended and was awarded a pay rise. All of this was approved behind closed doors by a small Chairman's Committee [Hawke's Bay Today, 19 August 2017].

As a result of public outcry over the way this was managed the Chairman's Committee has now been disbanded. However three of the mayoral candidates have been caught up in this situation they have inherited from Mr Yule. Who wants to take the risk and "rock the boat" by asking the hard questions?

As an outsider, mayoral candidate Stuart Perry has been critical of the stop-gap measures applied to "fix" water supply issues and he has been investigating options for future-proofing municipal supplies.

It is thanks to Mr Perry that the public learnt of the extraordinary decision by the current council to reject an offer made by a local contractor in January this year to drill a new safe, chemical-free drinking water bore at Romanes Park intended as a gift to the people of Havelock North.

Mr Perry agrees that, along with regular E. coli testing, "boil water" notices and chlorine are important safeguards. But he questions the need to rely permanently on chlorine treatment when we have the pure, naturally filtered water available to us in the confined layers of the Heretaunga Aquifer.

Apparently he is keen to see HDC water supplies all drawn from the secure, confined aquifer and for thorough, routine servicing of council bores and infrastructure to be incorporated into the council's strategy.

As someone who is not part of the current council Mr Perry is in a unique position to challenge the tunnel vision which has developed over the last decade, and to get the council back on track.

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