Kāeo’s decade-long boil-water notice raises health concerns

Kāeo chef Anna Valentine demonstrates the rigmarole involved in getting drinkable water. Photo / RNZ

By Peter de Graaf of RNZ

It has been 10 years since residents in the small Far North town of Kāeo were placed under a boil-water notice – but it is not a milestone anyone is celebrating.

Chef and cooking teacher Anna Valentine, who lives on Kāeo’s main street, is among those affected.

She said she had never been able to drink from the tap, and at times she could not even use the water for laundry.

“I wasn’t able to do my washing without it turning brown, basically. And every now and then it would just be super-brown, and then it would get clearer, and sometimes it would go off, and we wouldn’t know, so we’d be out of water and we’d be calling up to see what happened. It’s just been a roller coaster.”

Valentine said the colour of the water had improved in recent years, but it was still no good for drinking.

In July 2015, Northland’s Medical Officer of Health issued a boil-water notice because of levels of E. coli bacteria found in the water.

That notice had never been lifted.

Kāeo Water supplies just under 30 customers – a mix of homes, businesses and public facilities such as the toilets and community hall – on State Highway 10, the town’s main street.

Rather than face the cost of constantly boiling water, the Valentines have rigged up a tank for catching rainwater and every day they use it to fill up bottles for drinking water.

Valentine said she had organised public meetings and lobbied the council in the past, but little had changed.

“The water needs to be drinkable out of the tap, for the kids that go to the community hall, and the people coming through town. They don’t know that it’s not drinkable. The businesses in town, a lot of them have installed their own rainwater tanks because they just can’t rely on the water.”

Kāeo chef Anna Valentine says her children have never known what it's like to drink out of a tap. Photo / RNZ

Until the year 2000 Kāeo’s water supply was owned by the Far North District Council.

The council sold it to Doubtless Bay Water, which quit in 2008, saying it was not economically viable.

It was then taken on by Wai Care Environmental Consultants.

Kāeo Water operator Bryce Aldridge said it was difficult keeping up with ever-changing drinking water standards, especially for a small scheme like Kāeo’s.

“And the Government’s not assisting with the upgrading that’s needed to meet those standards, because of the size of plant that we are.”

Aldridge said he had never put up the price of water, and only a small minority complained about the quality.

“It’s actually only one client … I have spoken to the other clients, and this is their fear [if the system is upgraded]: the water price going up, and the battle of having to put fluoride in our water, so a boil water notice actually protects us there.”

The Ministry of Health has recently ordered the Far North District Council to add fluoride to its Kerikeri and Kaitāia town water supplies, but a spokesperson told RNZ the ministry did not order fluoridation of privately-owned water supplies.

Aldridge said the discolouration was caused by iron and manganese naturally present in the source water from the Waikara Stream.

Removing iron and manganese completely was difficult and required multiple treatment stages.

He said the next step for the water scheme would be to move the plant to a new location, and introduce UV treatment.

He told RNZ he had secured a new location just last week, but that had yet to be confirmed.

Kāeo's private water treatment plant, on School Gully Road, draws from the Waikara Stream. Photo / RNZ

Aldridge said he welcomed media scrutiny because it had caught the attention of Taumata Arowai, the national water authority, and had bumped Kāeo’s water supply up its priority list.

Taumata Arowai head of operations Steve Taylor said even a small private drinking water supply such as Kāeo’s had to meet the requirements of the Water Services Act 2021 and other rules.

The authority had sent a letter outlining its expectations in March, but a meeting scheduled that month had been cancelled by the supplier.

Expectations included boil-water notice communication with consumers, and providing a confirmed, funded plan for achieving compliance with legal requirements.

Taylor said those expectations had not yet been met.

The authority had set a new date of July 23 for meeting the supplier and inspecting the plant.

Taylor said boil water notices were only meant to be a temporary solution, because over time people could forget and risked drinking contaminated water.

The authority could take action if it believed a supplier was not responding adequately to concerns about unsafe drinking water or failed persistently to comply with legal requirements.

That could include requiring the local authority, in this case the Far North District Council, to take over the supply.

All Kāeo Water's customers are based on the Far North town's main street. Photo / RNZ

Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa pou arahi, or cultural manager, Raniera Kaio said the scheme had suffered from buck-passing between the council and the operator as to who was responsible.

He believed the only way to fix it was by the council, the operator and iwi working together.

“My personal opinion, indeed my professional opinion, is that the operator lacks the resources to fix it. Lacks the resources to fix it alone. It has to be a collaborative solution.”

Kaio said the water plant had been inundated in the 2007 floods and never fully recovered.

The boil-water notice also had a financial effect on the rūnanga, which spent $300-$400 a month on bottled water for staff and manuhiri [visitors].

He said Kāeo’s water woes were emblematic of the neglect suffered by many rural, Māori-majority towns.

The effects went well beyond the cost and inconvenience of having to boil water or buy it by the bottle.

“It’s about the dignity of Kāeo, the mana of Kāeo. And whānau in Kāeo have lived with daily anxiety around whether their water is safe to drink, that really affects not only your health, your hauora [wellbeing], but it sort of affects your own self-worth and your identity as being from Kāeo.”

However, Kaio said he was buoyed by news that Taumata Arowai was about to meet the operator, and hopeful a solution could be found.

Meanwhile, Anna Valentine just hoped one day soon her children would be able to drink water out of the tap.

“I mean, we live in New Zealand, but it feels like we’re in a bit of a third world country up here in Kāeo, having to go out every day and fill our plastic bottles from a water container that we collect off the roof. It’s just crazy, actually.”

Kāeo’s boil-water notice is not the longest-running one in the country.

A 2024 Drinking Water Regulation Report stated 74 long-term “consumer advisories” – which include boil-water notices – were in place at the end of last year, and 20 council supplies serving a total of 7000 people had advisories in place for three or more years.

“The persistence of long-term consumer advisories represents a significant regulatory and public health challenge,” the report stated.