Safer water-supply deadline

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 3

Safer water-supply deadline

Action may be forced on the Wairewa County Council to make the Little River water supply safer. The Health Department was waiting for the council to give a starting date for improvement work. It would probably force action if one was not set within a week, said a senior health protection officer, Mr George Dodd. Polluted water has been an issue in Little River for years. The council approved a $50,000 filtration and chlorination system for the water supply in May, but work has stalled since. The Health Depart-

ment has just approved a $21,000 grant towards the new system, and wanted to see some action soon. It could ask the Government to do the work, and bill the local authority, but Mr Dodd said he hoped it would not come to that. “The council met on Thursday, so it is not unreasonable to expect them to tell us a starting date within a week,” he said yesterday. It was not acceptable that Little River residents had to boil water to make it safe to drink. They had been doing this for years. “At times the water supply has had a faecal

coliform count of 1600 per 100 militres of water,” Mr Dodd said. “That is totally inadequate ... the New Zealand standard for drinking water is no conforms.” Thirty-five county households get water from this supply. It is drawn from a creek which runs through farms and this is the cause of the pollution. People could get salmonella and other diseases from water contaminated by animal faeces, Mr Dodd said. There had not been a case of salmonella in Little River that the department could link to the water supplly, but it

was difficult to pinpoint the cause of infection.

The Wairewa County Council acknowledged the need to start the work when it met yesterday. It did not, however, set a starting date. The starting date would be set by the consulting engineers the council had employed, said the County Clerk, Mr Bill Aydon, after the meeting. The consulting engineers, Royds, Sutherland McLeay, Ltd, said they had not received formal notification from the council to start the work. They expected to approach the council soon about a starting date now

that some funding had been approved by the Health Department. Health Department pressure has been welcomed by the owner of the Little River store, Mr Pat Robson, who has been fighting for better water since he arrived in the community four years ago. The water had been condemned by the department every time it had been checked. He asked why the council and the department had not moved sooner. The water was so bad that it had to be boiled, and his own family had resorted to carting water from a nearby well, he said.