170,000 Christchurch residents ‘at risk’ from drinking water as 27 councils given notice to fix

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

From reporters Debbie Jamieson and Keiller MacDuff:
A total of 170,000 people in Christchurch are potentially at risk of bacteria in drinking water, as regulator Taumata Arowai races to identify councils without protozoa barriers on their water supplies in the wake of Queenstown’s cryptosporidium outbreak.

Taumata Arowai on Thursday sent letters to 27 councils, telling them to lock in plans - and money - to fix their drinking water supplies by June.

Most of the councils are in the South Island. Christchurch has the largest potentially at-risk population, the regulator said, with about 170,000 people drinking from supplies in part fed from wells less than 30 metres deep.

These appear to be in the Ferrymead water supply zone, which also feeds the Lyttelton Harbour basin (nearly 23,000 people), and the central water supply zone (supplying about 158,000 people).

However, Christchurch City Council has so far been confident the health risk is low. It said it was unlikely people would get water from only the shallow wells, because it mixed with water from other sources first.