Some Kāeo residents remain without water after the supplier shut the water off last month. Photo / Yolisa Tswanya
Some Kāeo residents remain without water after the supplier shut the water off last month. Photo / Yolisa Tswanya
It has now been nearly four weeks since Kāeo residents last had running water, a situation that has forced businesses to scale back and locals to rely on an emergency water tanker for daily needs.
What began as a short-term outage has now become a daily struggle for residents, whilediscussions between the supplier, Wai Care and the Far North District Council (FNDC) continue, with no resolution yet.
Residents said they haven’t had water since it was cut off on October 18.
In the meantime, the FNDC has extended the availability of the water tanker currently providing an emergency supply of clean water to residents.
The tanker will now be available daily between 7am and 7pm until Friday.
“Negotiations are continuing between the owner of the Kāeo water supply and the National Water Services Authority - Taumata Arowai to get water supplies restored as soon as possible to Kāeo residents and businesses. As soon as an agreement is made, the council will do all it can to ensure customers connected to the Wai Care water supply receive potable water,” FNDC said.
This week, the council also called on residents and business owners who have been without water to contact them to confirm how many are affected.
“The council emailed 13 Wai Care customers, but it is concerned there may be others without water that it is unaware of.”
Anaru Kira, who has an office in Kaeo, said the situation was highly frustrating and he contacted Northland MP Grant McCallum as they were desperate for an end to the situation.
“We shouldn’t be in this predicament or having to organise having your meetings out of the area because there is no water for the toilets and everything else.”
He said since the outage, they have moved their meetings and operations to Kerikeri.
“All the people that live there are ratepayers and there should be a solution to this problem. It has been on for years now and we don’t know when the situation is going to improve.”
McCallum said Kira did contact him and said he would try to get an update on the situation as it was not acceptable.
Wai Care customers are asked to email the council directly at ask.us@fndc.govt.nz or call on 0800 920 029.
Council seeks to establish exactly how many customers are without water, where they are located, how they are currently accessing water, and if they have any specific health concerns.
