Auckland's water restrictions look set to be lifted on Saturday. Photo / File
Auckland's water restrictions look set to be lifted on Saturday. Photo / File
Outdoor water restrictions look set to be lifted in Auckland at Labour Weekend.
Heavy rainfall over the past month has seen the city's water dams back to normal with Auckland Mayor Phil Goff saying it is time to lift the ban on using outdoor sprinklers.
A recommendation by Watercare tolift Auckland's outdoor water restrictions on Saturday will be considered by Auckland Council's governing body at an extraordinary meeting on Thursday.
Since May 16 last year, residents have been banned from washing cars and houses and watering gardens with an outdoor hose in response to the city's dams plunging to dangerously low levels following a long drought.
In October, the rules were relaxed for things like commercial car washes and watering sports fields with irrigation systems.
On December 14, the rules were eased to allow Auckland residents to use outdoor hoses with a trigger nozzle, but the ban still applied to home sprinklers and irrigation systems.
"After a prolonged run of drought and drier-than-normal weather for over two years, we've finally had a good boost in rainfall since September that has seen dam levels rise by over 30 percentage points from 60 per cent in July to 91 per cent full today," Goff said.
"With dam levels back to normal, there is now a sufficient level of certainty that we can lift restrictions without having to reverse that decision in the near future."
He thanked Aucklanders for their outstanding effort to reduce their water use over the past 17 months.
"We've saved a colossal amount of water – more than 20 billion litres. And we have developed good water saving habits we want to keep up. This both saves the consumer money and helps our environment.
Watercare chairwoman Margaret Devlin. Photo / File
"At the same time, we have supported Watercare to deliver over 100 million litres a day more supply by the first quarter in 2022, to ensure that water supply is guaranteed to be able to meet both population growth and drought.
This includes the construction of three new water treatment plants. Combined with the work on the network to reduce leakage which has saved 9 million litres a day, this has strengthened the resilience of our water supply."
Watercare chair Margaret Devlin said the council-controlled organisation has provided the mayor and councillors with comprehensive information to guide their decision-making.
"At this stage forecasters are predicting slightly wetter-than-normal conditions for summer. Our modelling, based on conservative calculations, gives us confidence that it's highly unlikely we'd need to impose further restrictions later in summer," she said.
Devlin said Aucklanders are using 36 million litres less each day than in 2019.
