Carterton council focus on water use

NOT EASY: Colin Wright says detecting leaks can be a tough job.

Increasing water use was highlighted as a potential issue at the Carterton District Council monthly meeting.

In 2008 the council introduced water-meter reading and billing. At that point daily usage was about 2700 cubic metres per day - a big drop from 3250cu m per day in 2007.

From 2008 through to 2011, water consumption had been steadily dropping.

Water use during 2011 was 1500cu m per day - a 50 per cent drop from 2007.

However, in the last few years water use has been on the increase again. In 2013 water use was 1950cu m per day.

The council is planning to carry out leak detection during the 2014/15 year to find out if this could be contributing to the increase.

One of the advantages of this is that the council can identify leaks on the private-property side of the water meter, which can otherwise go undetected by leak-detection work on the mains.

Chief executive Colin Wright said at Wednesday's meeting that private water leaks could have a major effect on the town's water use "because the leak can be running 24/7 for days and we have no way of detecting it".

Councillors also outlined the effect the drought last summer might have had on water use.

They were unsure whether the increased use was an outcome of people using more water or the fact the population had grown by 14 per cent and there had been an increase in occupied dwellings of 16 per cent in the town.

Councillor Greg Lang suggested the council sell more stormwater tanks in an effort to alleviate what may be a problem in the future.

Corporate services manager Martin Sebire said the council had a stock of stormwater tanks the public could buy but needed to advertise them more so people were aware of the option.

The consensus was that Carterton water use was not a major issue yet because of the unknown contributing circumstances but the leak detection had to be done and water use must be monitored closely in the next year.