Region’s muddled history clarified
After a gloomy week of rain, the sun finally returned to Darfield. But the rain had brought poison, and the town soon fell sick.
The crisis began with a smattering of upset stomachs, but ended with more than 100 seriously ill people.
For one week in 2012, locals were vomiting and nauseous, struck down with diarrhoea and crippling abdominal pain.
Residents piled into the local pharmacy. An employee told The Press about a toddler who had been vomiting every half hour for 40 hours straight.
Days after the sickness began, a routine test found the town’s supply was contaminated with E.coli bacteria at 70 times the safe limit for human consumption.
It was the third such drinking water contamination in Canterbury in four years.
The unfolding crisis in Havelock North, where thousands have become sick from drinking the water, has echoes in rural Canterbury where small towns have been poisoned by contaminated water.
By the end of the Darfield outbreak, 138 people had probable cases of campylobacter, about 4 per cent of the population.
A study found it likely cost the economy $1 million.
One affected resident was the teenage son of Green MP Mojo Mathers. He was nauseous, vomiting, and off school for three days.
‘‘I was not worried about him, but obviously found it upsetting, as tap water at school should be safe for our children to drink,’’ she said this week.
An independent report found that Darfield’s contamination was caused by a basic, preventable failure.
Water was being supplied from the Waimakariri river, but the chlorinator treating it was broken.
The heavy rain had swept animal feces into the swollen river, through the broken chlorinator, and down the throats of Darfield’s population.
‘‘The consequences of drinking water contamination can be very severe,’’ said Canterbury medical officer of health Dr Alistair Humphrey.
‘‘We’ve been fortunate they [outbreaks] have been small ones.’’
New Zealand’s rate of gastro illnesses is among the highest in the developed world. Canterbury’s rate is about a third higher than the national rate.
It is partly due to the high number of farm workers, but drinking water plays its part too.
‘‘We have to protect the source water,’’ Humphrey said.
‘‘In some parts of the world they put barbed wire and soldiers around their reservoirs, but we don’t do that here.
‘‘The way to avoid [contamination] is to put in place as many barriers as you can.’’
Four years before the Darfield outbreak, Springston’s water became poisoned with feces. All it took was one broken pipe to make a town sick.
Residents had complained of bad drinking water for a couple of years, but over one week in February 2008, some fell gravely ill.
An advertisement for a town meeting was headed ‘‘Devils in the water’’.
The majority of the town’s 500 residents attended, about half of whom appeared to have been affected by sickness.
‘‘It was the most distressing public meeting I’ve been to in a long time,’’ said Eugenie Sage, then an Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillor and now a Green MP.
‘‘There were several women talking about how they were too scared to bathe their children because of the risk of them getting sick.’’
After testing stool samples, health authorities confirmed several cases of campylobacter.
More alarmingly, they found one case of E.coli 0157, a toxic infection that can result in kidney failure and death.
‘‘We dodged a bullet in Springston,’’ Humphrey said.
There have been no issues with water in Springston since, which now comes from a deep bore.
In 2009 there was a contamination in Dunsandel, a small community surrounded by dairy farms.
The town’s 70-metre deep bore had become infected with E.coli, despite being considerably deeper than bores usually at risk.
It is difficult to connect sickness with drinking water, as symptoms occur several days afterwards, and most don’t go to the doctor.
Areas with water supplies testing positive for E.coli since 2012 include Rolleston, Hanmer Springs, Waiau, Arthur’s Pass, West Melton, and Darfield.
It has improved in some areas. In Cheviot, residents were on a permanent boil notice for about a decade.
Jane Demeter grew up in the area, and was visiting in 2001 when she became sick with the symptoms of campylobacter.
‘‘I went to bed, curled up in the fetal position for a week, and thought I was going to die,’’ she said.
‘‘People figure they’ll just get well. That was me: I kept saying I’ll be fine tomorrow, but it was a week of miserableness before I was feeling fine.’’
In 2009, the Hurunui District Council began treating Cheviot’s drinking water, after Humphrey invoked powers under national legislation allowing him to force the council to make it safer. It worked.
While there have been no outbreaks in Canterbury since Darfield, a crisis on the scale of Havelock North could happen, Humphrey said.
For every confirmed case of gastro sickness, there were about nine unreported cases.
There are many thousands reported in Canterbury each year.
‘‘Most gastro cases don’t present, so we don’t hear about them.
‘‘The cost is much higher than you might assume.’’