Auckland water-saving campaign ends
It’s now safe for Aucklanders to stop reducing their water consumption, Watercare has announced.
The Auckland Councilcontrolled organisation called on residents to cut their water use by 20 litres per person per day after the Tasman Tempest smashed the region in March.
The deluge caused massive slips in the Hunua Ranges, filling water supply dams with silt and reducing treatment capacity at the Ardmore Water Treatment Plant.
At a press conference on Monday morning, Watercare spokesman Mark Bourne said the company had been gradually increasing the plant’s capacity over the past few weeks.
‘‘After the ‘off-the-charts’ rainfall event in early March, Auckland’s water supply situation was fragile with our Ardmore plant sometimes shutting down for hours at a time,’’ he said.
‘‘Our team was working around the clock to run the plant manually in order to stabilise production. They were also running our four other metropolitan plants at full-steam.’’
The Ardmore plant was now processing 230 million litres of water per day, Bourne said.
‘‘This means the five plants that serve people from Pukekohe to Waiwera can now reliably produce 500 million litres of water a day.
‘‘We are confident that this is enough to meet Auckland’s normal water demand for this time of year, and we are pleased to call an end to our Save 20 campaign.’’
Bourne said Watercare was ‘‘extremely thankful’’ for Aucklanders’ efforts and the organisation would be reviewing how it responded to the downpour.
‘‘Already, we are working with Auckland Council to identify lone Debbie hits the country.
‘‘The last event was unusual and looking at the forecast it seems there won’t be a huge impact on Auckland,’’ Bourne said.
However he was still encouraging Aucklanders to use water wisely.