Water ‘smells like swimming pool’
Christchurch residents in areas where drinking water has been chlorinated are concerned by the taste and smell of what is coming out of their taps.
Brooklands, Kainga and Spencerville water supplies in the city’s northeast were the first to be chlorinated last week. Riccarton joined the ranks after chlorination began on Wednesday.
Water supplies at the city’s 56 pump stations are being treated while engineers carry out remedial work to fix sub-standard well heads.
Kainga man Glenn McAdam said the smell of chlorine was obvious in his home.
‘‘When I first got home and turned the kitchen tap on the smell was … wow. Since then it’s not as strong. I don’t know whether it was just my nose getting used to this chlorine.
‘‘If I was to run the bath and close the door and the window it would smell like a public swimming pool.’’
Jan Burney, in Brooklands, agreed: ‘‘It smells like you’re in the swimming pool because you’re in an enclosed space. You can smell it on your skin.’’
Her husband, Gary Burney, said the smell crept up on you at random times: ‘‘Sometimes you don’t notice it but then, ugh, you notice it.’’
Jan Burney said the irony was that Brooklands had some of the best tasting water in the city before it was chlorinated.
‘‘It’s really nice water – it was really nice water.
‘‘I actually became a bit dehydrated in the first few days because I was smelling the water. I wasn’t drinking it because I couldn’t stomach the thought of it. I was thinking I was going to have to buy bottled water, but I had to bite the bullet.’’
The Press tried the water and there was as light metallic after taste compared to the stillun chlorinated water in the central city.
Burney said she was determined to keep the council to its promise that the chlorination will be temporary.
Chlorination works by killing the bacteria that can get into water supplies and spread disease. The solution reacts with organic matter and in the process gives off a chlorine taste.
It was a preventative measure,
"If I was to run the bath and close the door and the window it would smell like a public swimming pool." Kainga man Glenn McAdam so if there was anything ‘‘bad’’ in
the pipe network it would react with the treatment and be killed. But if there was nothing for it to target the chlorine would stay in its form and remain tasteless.
Prior to the treatment programme Dave Adamson, council general manager of city services, told The Press: ‘‘Chlorine might be noticeable at the beginning of the treatment because it does react with any organic matter in the network or even on the end of your tap.
‘‘However, over a very short period of time, the chlorine will kill that organic matter and the taste will disappear. If there’s no organic matter present you don’t get the chlorine taste.’’
Supplies in Sockburn and Hornby have been treated since yesterday, a council spokeswoman said.
Halswell, Parklands, Heathcote Valley and communities in Lyttelton Harbour will be treated in the coming weeks.
The risk of contamination was extremely small – some of the city’s wells still in operation date back to 1927, but there has never been a contamination at those heads.
But after three people died and 5500 fell ill in the Havelock North water crisis of August 2016, the Christchurch City Council ordered an urgent review of its 108 underground wells to uncover any potential dangers to the drinking water supply.
Many below-ground well heads were found to be in disrepair and vulnerable to pollution from dirty surface groundwater, eventually triggering the decision to temporarily treat water at the city’s 56 pumping stations.
About 82 per cent of drinking water in New Zealand is chlorinated, from supplies in Auckland and Wellington to Dunedin and Invercargill – Christchurch is the country’s largest unchlorinated community.