Council’s water safety plan incomplete

The Havelock North gastro outbreak has revealed that emergency plans meant to address town water supply contamination have not been completed more than eight months after they were supposed to have been.

The Hastings District Council’s water safety plan, which focuses on public health, lists the various risks posed to the water supply and how they can be addressed.

It notes that biological contamination of the water supply is the most significant risk to public health and the hardest to control.

Among the risks is contamination from direct connection of wells to surface pollution sources, which is the probable cause of the campylobacter contamination that affected 5200 people this month.

The plan, developed in 2013, stated the council would develop various emergency and contingency plans by December 31 last year.

But a council spokesman said the ‘‘specific and emergency contingency plans to the best of our knowledge these have not been completed as yet’’.

‘‘[It] is part of the multi-agency response and continues to be worked on by both the Hastings District Council and the [Hawke’s Bay] DHB,’’ he said.

However a DHB spokeswoman said the plan was ‘‘written, owned and implemented by the supplier [HDC] and it is their responsibility to follow it and ensure the timeframes in the plan are met’’.

The ‘‘improvement item is from HDC’s plan therefore it is an improvement item for HDC to implement, not the DHB. To the DHB’s knowledge HDC has not requested any input from the DHB into developing these contingency plans,’’ she said.

She said the Central North Island Drinking Water Assessment Unit had not been advised by the council that the plan had been completed.

Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule said it appeared that a plan related to contamination had not been completed.

But the council had produced ‘‘other over-arching documents such as the Business Continuity Plan’’ and this was considered ‘‘a more appropriate way’’ of handling the emergency supply risk than a separate plan.

A plan would not have made any difference, as ‘‘the decision to chlorinate was made before environmental water tests were completed’’, Yule said.

‘‘The ability to quickly add chlorine to the reticulation was enabled by prior preparation and response planning. This has been done by the prior installation of chlorine dosing systems to allow for a very quick response.’’