Council urges Tauranga residents to watch water use

Water use during the peak of last week's hot weather reached 53.6 million litres. Photo / NZME

Tauranga City Council is urging the community to save more water.

In a written statement, the council said water use "continued to climb" last week despite recently introduced outdoor watering restrictions.

The council's water services manager Peter Bahrs said water use during the peak of last week's hot weather reached 53.6 million litres.

"We know the increase in demand for water is driven primarily by outdoor water use, and thankfully as soon as the rain started falling on Sunday, demand for water dropped off by 20 per cent."

The statement said Tauranga's average water use sits at around 43.7 million litres of water per day and in previous summers has climbed to 58 million litres per day.

But it said after three dry summers in a row, the streams that supply the city with water were at the lowest levels seen going into November. This meant anything higher than a seven day rolling average of 50 million litres per day was "unsustainable" this summer.

"There's a limit to how much water we can take without affecting the health of the streams," Bahrs said.

"We want to thank those who are playing their part to help reduce their water use; however, we need more people to do the same thing and save more water."

Tauranga City Council released its Water Watchers Plan in November as part of its efforts to maintain the city's water supply year-round.

As part of the plan, sprinklers were banned completely from December to March, but handheld hoses with a trigger nozzle were allowed for an hour between 7pm and 10pm.

And the council wanted to ensure water use didn't creep up over the Christmas break with sunshine forecast.

"Please help us spread the message about our new Water Watchers Plan and dampen your water use wherever you can," Bahrs said.