Council tapped over water woes

People enduring ongoing breaks and repairs to the Havelock North water supply are asking for some prior notice before the tap is turned off by the Hastings District Council.

Toop St resident Kay Bazzard said for the past few years households in her neighbourhood had suffered "broken water supply" with no indication of the problem or when it would be repaired.

"There's a stop in the water and then it comes back on again after repairs are made," Mrs Bazzard said. "The thing that puzzled me and my neighbours was that we never get any information about the water being stopped.

"It's starting to become noticeable. One of the ways you can tell there's been work done to the water pipes is the tar seal left on the road where they've come in, done the repairs [underground] and put tar over the top again and gone away."

Mrs Bazzard said she did not speak for her neighbourhood but believed many other people had experienced the same difficulties with breaks in the water supply.

"One of the most frequent places of work for repairs is in Pufflett Rd, under a steep slope by Keirunga Gardens. You can see areas which had been dug out. Going back to the T junction at Tanner St there is a recent repair job done there on the grass verge.

"We are all coming to the conclusion that the infrastructure is old and should have been repaired a decade ago."

Mrs Bazzard said she had been living in Toop St for 13 years and over time the water pressure had also eased, especially during the summer. The council's water services manager Brett Chapman said there had been two failures of water pipes in two days in the Toop St area of Havelock North.

"The failures required the water to be switched off while repairs were made and it is not our usual practice to notify residents when reacting to these types of repairs unless the water will be off for a considerable length of time," Mr Chapman said.

"We suspect the second failure may be in relation to refilling and pressurisation of the main and a weakened joint which let go."

Mr Chapman said the council delivered notices to all affected residents giving the date and length of time they would be without a water supply before any scheduled maintenance or upgrade work. In some instances the council set up a temporary supply if the shutdown was for an extended period.

"We also monitor the frequency of network failures and plan for asset renewals when the frequency of repairs exceeds normal trends," Mr Chapman said.