Christchurch residents need to continue to boil water

9 March 2011

Despite actions being taken to repair Christchurch’s drinking water supply, Christchurch residents still need to boil or treat all water used for drinking, brushing teeth or in food preparation.

The Christchurch City Council is working to make Christchurch’s water supply safe to drink, including repairing infrastructure and chlorinating supply to parts of the city where there is a high risk of contaminated water.

At the same time, Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) is assisting the City Council to undertake an extensive water testing programme in order to deem the supply safe to drink.

“All the actions being taken to repair our water supply and make it safe to drink take time to take effect,” says Dr Ramon Pink, Medical Officer of Health.

“For example, chlorine takes some time to diffuse through the system and get to a level where it has killed all the bugs. Just because you can smell it or taste it, doesn’t mean the water is safe to drink without boiling.”

At this stage, it is expected that people will need to continue to boil or treat water for at least another two weeks. The City Council will advise residents when they no longer need to boil water.

The decision to remove the boil water notice will only be made once water testing demonstrates that an adequate level of chlorine is present in water in areas that have been treated and that there are no harmful bugs present in areas not treated.

“In short, we urge all residents to continue to boil or treat all water used for drinking, brushing teeth or in food preparation, says Dr Pink. “This includes water sourced from taps, tankers, private artesian wells or aquifers.”

Christchurch’s water infrastructure is still delicate, so people should also continue to conserve water across the city by limiting showering, flushing toilets and other water use. Excess use of water could lead to more disruption to the supply and more damage to the network, and therefore more risk of contamination.

How to boil or treat water

Bringing water to the boil is sufficient to kill bugs – water does not need to be boiled for a specific number of minutes.

If you cannot boil water, treat it by adding 1 teaspoon of household bleach per 10 litres of water and leave for 30 minutes.

Water testing programme

Testing of Christchurch’s water supply for contamination or adequate levels of chlorine is a crucial step in ensuring tap water is safe for people to drink.

Water testers are visiting homes across the city to test water. These homes have been selected because they are in a good position to provide a sample representative of specific suburbs, or simply because an outside tap is easy to access. Homes are not being chosen because there is a greater risk of contamination of their water supply.

The purpose of the testing is to understand if there is any contamination in the community water supply, not to test individual homes. Individual results will not be provided.

People still need to boil or treat drinking after their supply has been tested.

Water supply in schools and early learning centres

Schools are required to ensure their staff and students have access to adequate supplies of safe drinking water before re-opening.

Schools can supply bottled water sufficient to meet all drinking water needs of staff and students. Alternatively, they can ask staff and students to bring their own drinking water, but are still required to hold a back up supply on site.

There are a small number of schools in Christchurch that have their own wells to supply water. These need to be authorised as safe to drink by the City Council, before schools are able to revert to using these for drinking water.

Drinking water fountains must be disconnected or made inaccessible until the boil water notice has been lifted. Also, no food preparation or home economics classes can take place at schools until the boil water notice lifted.

ENDS

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