• Watch: ‘Disappointing’ development in push to remove chlorine from Napier’s water

Watch: ‘Disappointing’ development in push to remove chlorine from Napier’s water

An initial rejection of Christchurch City Council’s proposal to remove chlorine from its water has been labelled “disappointing” by Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise who was hoping to follow in their footsteps.

The two cities have been fighting against proposed mandatory chlorination, brought in through tighter regulations set up to control water quality in New Zealand, in the wake of the 2016 Havelock North campylobacter outbreak.

Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise speaking about the chlorine issue at this week’s town huddle.


The new standards – which require councils to treat drinking water with chlorine as part of a “multi-barrier approach”– reflect a much lower tolerance for risk following the Havelock North event.

Mayor Wise, who has been watching closely what Christchurch is doing and campaigned heavily for the removal of chlorine and residual disinfectants, is still committed to doing what she can to remove chlorine from Napier’s water.

Speaking to residents at a town huddle meeting on Monday, she said while they haven’t had “final confirmation” indications two to three weeks ago revealed Christchurch’s new water safety plan was not going to be approved.

She has requested a copy of their water safety plan, which Christchurch City Council has agreed to share, along with the reasons why it “hasn’t been approved”. CCC is, however, still awaiting the final review.

“We’re certainly just going to continue to work alongside them because it is Christchurch and us who are the two main centres that are really fighting hard to work towards removing chlorine,” Wise said. 

As part of the raft of strict new rules, councils must submit a water safety plan as to how they are going to deliver safe drinking water. Councils can apply for a special exemption to stop using chlorine if they can satisfy the regulator, supplies are safe without it.

How exactly councils go about achieving that is what Wise says is still “up in the air at the moment”.

If it is approved, it “demonstrates that there is the ability to have a chlorine-free network”.

“We can look to make similar changes to our water safety plan, although it won’t be identical because we’ve got different issues and different networks.”

Christchurch City Council’s General Manager City Services, David Adamson, said they have received the adequacy report from a review of its revised water safety plan.

The review was carried out by a panel of four drinking water assessors, supported by five technical experts. The adequacy report is considered a working document intended to allow the Council to address the findings and resubmit the water safety plan for approval.

Adamson said the report details 80 findings relating to “non-conformances” with the Ministry of Health's framework for water safety plans.

“The concluding section of the report invites the Council to meet with the panel and discuss the findings, and we will do so once we have worked through the proposed responses. Some of the findings can be addressed relatively easily through amendments to the water safety plan and others will require some discussion before finalising our response,” he said.

The report also has provision for the council to appeal the findings within a two-month period, but Adamson says their preference is to work in partnership with the panel to clarify and finalise the findings along with our approach.

“Council staff will now spend time reviewing the adequacy report and briefing Council members about its findings before providing feedback to the review panel. We expect the final report will be made publicly available in the coming weeks.”

Following five positive E.coli results which showed faecal contamination in Napier's water supply in 2017, a decision was made to add chlorine. However, dirty water resulted, and many residents have experienced murky water running out of their taps.

Last year it was established the cause of the brown water is a chemical reaction between chlorine and manganese coming out of the bores. Wise said council staff are “very conscious” of the impact this is having on the community and have made a commitment to have the dirty water issue resolved by the end of the year. Priority is being given to the worst affected areas; Tamatea, Pirimai and Onekawa.

As for the chlorine-free review, the council has asked for registrations of interest for an independent party to review the network and its condition, as well as put forward options around removing chlorine form the city’s water supply.

The review, which is expected to be completed by the end of August, will then be taken out to the community for consultation.

Wise says going without chlorine is “definitely possible”.

“It will come at a cost. We don’t know what that cost is yet but it will require investment in our network and our infrastructure, so it really is just trying to get more guidance from central government as to what that looks like [and] what will satisfy them that we are able to provide safe drinking water without having a residual disinfectant in our water.”

 

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