Get on board to conserve water, mayor asks
Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel is calling on residents to ‘‘get on board’’ and conserve water so restrictions are not needed this summer.
A five-month campaign to encourage residents to reduce their water usage will begin next week after the Christchurch City Council endorsed the strategy at its meeting yesterday.
People will be asked to conserve water so council staff can continue repairing wells and meet the May deadline to rid the city’s water of chlorine. Repairs to wells would have to stop and chlorination would continue for longer if water usage remained high during the summer.
If residents do not voluntarily reduce their usage, the council will introduce restrictions, but only as a last resort. Sprinklers would be banned and only handheld hoses could be used between 9pm and 7am every other day if the restrictions were put in place.
The city has not had water restrictions since the 2011 earthquakes and the 1998 drought.
Christchurch residents are prolific users of water, using about twice the amount per person of Aucklanders, and consumption doubles over summer compared to winter months.
NIWA expects Canterbury’s rainfall and temperature will likely be in the ‘‘near normal’’ range from now to December
Dalziel said she wanted people to conserve water now.
‘‘This is not a case of imposing restrictions. This is an opportunity for Christchurch residents to help the team get the bore heads repaired in sufficient time that we can continue to reduce the chlorine in the water and aim to get it out of the water altogether.
‘‘We need people to come on board with a campaign to conserve. We don’t want to impose restrictions.’’
Council water supply programme manager Helen Beaumont said the council wanted city-wide conservation efforts to begin in November, but when major work was happening on wells in particular suburbs, people in those areas would be asked to save even more.
Work was concentrated on wells in the northwest of the city currently and another 13 wells, including nine in the southwest, would be repaired from December to February, affecting Sockburn, Wigram, Hornby, Hei Hei, Islington, Oaklands and Halswell.
Dalziel wanted information put on the council’s website each day with the consumption rates, including comparisons to last year and a target to reach.
Council city services general manager David Adamson said it could be tricky to get all the relevant information together, but staff would see if it could happen.
Councillor Raf Manji said giving the public a way to measure daily water consumption was an important incentive to get people to change.
Residents quizzed in a survey on conservation measures were overwhelmingly supportive – two-thirds of the 500 questioned agreed to reduce use, while 78 per cent favoured restrictions.
‘‘This is not a case of imposing restrictions.’’ Mayor Lianne Dalziel