Gastro scare hot topic at water forum
The Havelock North gastro outbreak — and whether the same catastrophe could unfold in other places — is the hot topic at a major water conference. The E.coli contamination of the Hawke’s Bay town’s water supply in August, causing about 5200 people to become ill, prompted a Government inquiry that kicks off with a public hearing in Hastings next Thursday.
Water New Zealand chief executive John Pfahlert says the debacle will be front and centre of his organisation’s annual conference, running over three days in Rotorua.
He said sessions would discuss the outbreak, including an industry expert panel discussion on Friday.
Although reluctant to speculate on causes of the contamination while inquiries were still taking place, Pfahlert said it had raised major questions for the water sector that stretched far beyond Havelock North.
“I think what it raises for the sector is an opportunity to have a look at the wider regulatory environment around how we control drinking water standards in New Zealand.
“What we are hoping will come out of the inquiry is an opportunity to run the ruler over the legislation, the way in which it is administered by the Ministry of Health through drinking water assessors at district health boards, and perhaps some of the engineering issues.” These included how water wells were drilled and how they were made secure.
“Another issue is whether we’ve got an appropriate and adequate training regime for people who work in water treatment plants.”
He hoped the Government inquiry would take a two-stage approach looking at the Havelock North episode along with the systemic issues it raised for the wider sector.
Asked how pressing the issue was, Pfahlert said: “I think it gets urgent to the extent that we need to do something, but I don’t think it makes a substantial difference whether we do it tomorrow or in 12 months.”
In general, New Zealand’s network provided clean drinking water for people the vast majority of the time, he said. “This incident simply points out that if you are supplying your community with untreated water — even if it’s from a secure source — you run the risk that when something goes wrong, you can actually make a lot of people very sick.”
The often controversial topics of water chlorination and fluoridation were also being thrashed out at the conference, with one speech drawing on a new report showing every dollar spent on fluoridation was equivalent to $9 in public health benefits.
Pfahlert expected that chlorination would increasingly become a debated topic.
“And in communities where they’ve had a long history of fresh water from a pure, clean aquifer with no problems, that’s going to be a pretty hard sell.”