Auckland’s water and wastewater infrastructure coped relatively well with last night’s heavy rain and wind, with no new major storm-related water outages.

Watercare chief operations officer Mark Bourne says: “Thankfully, the impact of the heavy rain and wind overnight has not had a major impact on our services and hasn’t set back our recovery from last week’s storm.

“In contrast to Friday’s storm – when 10 of our wastewater pump stations were flooded and stopped working – today we have all of our wastewater pump stations operational.

“We believe there are fewer than 100 customers in west Auckland who were affected by last week’s storm who don’t have water this morning.

“Last night we surveyed customers in the affected area to check that what they’re experiencing aligns with our understanding of where the issues lie, and for the most part, it does. Our crews are working to resolve these remaining issues.

“If there are further watermain breaks today across the city, our crews will expect to restore service to affected customers within five hours, in line with our normal procedures.”

Bourne says the company is receiving reports of wastewater overflows around the city.

“While overall the impact of last night’s weather was not as bad as we’d geared up for, there was still a significant amount of rain, with parts of the central city recording 100mm overnight.

“The rain inundated parts of our wastewater network and has caused a number of overflows across the city, many of which have been reported by our customers.

“Our crews will be heading out to clean-up as soon as these overflows have stopped, however it may still take a few days to get through them all.”

Bourne says the company is continuing to keep a close eye on water quality in the western dams.

“We’re continuing to keep a close watch on the level of turbidity (dirtiness) in the water at our dams in the Waitākere Ranges, and the Huia Water Treatment Plant continues to operate at reduced production rates.”

Important note to editors: All the water we provide is safe to drink from the tap and meets New Zealand Drinking Water Standards. We have increased sampling in our network since last week’s storm, as we understand people may be feeling concerned and looking for extra reassurance.

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