Water-saving plea ignored
Christchurch residents are still largely ignoring a call to conserve city water or risk restrictions or more chlorination.
The Christchurch City Council has asked householders and commercial water users to cut back to ease the pressure on the system and make vital well repairs easier to carry out.
As part of a five-month campaign that began in November, the council said it wanted collective water use across the city to be no higher than 140 million litres per day.
However, an analysis by The Press of water use over the Christmas-New Year holiday break shows residents are paying little heed to the council.
With the exceptions of Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, when use fell just a few per cent below the 140m litre threshold, taps have been left running regardless. On December 29, the city used 183m litres of water – more than 30 per cent higher than the requested maximum.
Residents have already been warned that, without reductions, the council might have to use wells from which water would need to be chlorinated.
Watering restrictions may be another consequence of not enough buy-in from the public.
Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel has previously said the plea to conserve water was not because of any shortage – there has been plenty of rain – but to allow for speedy repairs.
On the council’s website there are nine ‘‘Our Water Use’’ dials – one for the city as a whole and eight for each water zone. Each has three segments – green for average and ‘‘no restrictions necessary’’, yellow for heightened alert, and red for danger and ‘‘restrictions may apply’’.
According to council figures, Christchurch residents, from December 24 to January 1 inclusive, used 1.394 billion litres – an average of 154,916 litres a day, or about 11 per cent more than asked for. In that nine-day period, water use in the central-city zone was constantly in the yellow segment of above 55m litres a day.
On six days – December 24, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 – city zone use broke up into the danger red segment above 75m litres a day, peaking at 88.139m litres on the 29th, 17 per cent above the top of the yellow.
The council’s website says that level of use means ‘‘we may need to impose water restrictions’’.
On December 30, residential water use across all eight zones pushed the limits.
Six zones – Ferrymead, Northwest, Parklands, Rawhiti, Riccarton and West – were in the orange segment. Central and Kainga-Brooklands were in the red. The council was approached for comment. It is unclear if the council has taken any action as a result of high water use over the holiday period.