Water leaks worst in rural areas

WELLINGTON: Rural communities have some of the worst leaky water pipes in the country and some regional councils are losing as much as 50% of the water put into their pipes.

That is an estimate from an industry group, Water New Zealand.

It said leaks are harder to identify in rural areas, where pipes are spread across a wide area.

Aucklanders have been asked to save 30 million litres of water a day while storage dam levels are low, but the city pipes are leaking as much as 50 million litres daily.

A data scientist at the sector group,

Lesley Smith, said leaky pipes are a nationwide problem.

‘‘There’s more than one network in New Zealand where more than 50% of water going into the pipes isn’t coming out the other end.

‘‘It tends to be our smaller councils that have bigger problems with water loss and I guess that partly reflects the funding constraints that are faced by those communities,’’ Ms Smith said.

She believes the trend towards more water meters in homes will help pinpoint problem areas.

In Auckland water managers also don’t know how much water has leaked over the past five months — a period when usage restrictions came in, and in which there was a huge increase in pipe breakages due to the ground drying out and contracting.

However, Water New Zealand said Auckland actually had one of the better rates of ‘‘real water loss’’ in the country.

Watercare chief executive Raveen Jaduram said it had started a proactive leak detection programme.

Over the next year the council will examine 6000km of pipes and an improved response time of a maximum of five days when council staff receive reports of water leakages. — RNZ