Western Bay water demand hits peak

Water use in Western Bay is at peak demand and residents are being urged to ease up on their consumption to avoid restrictions being put in place.

Western Bay of Plenty District Council is closely monitoring its reservoirs in the three water zone catchments of Western, Central and Eastern, but with no rain in sight for the rest of this month, the whole District is on now high alert to conserve.

Utilities Manager Kelvin Hill says reservoirs in the Western Zone (Waihi Beach and Katikati) and Central Zone (Omokoroa, Te Puna and Minden) are only just maintaining the necessary levels to supply residents.

Reservoirs must maintain a constant 50 percent minimum water level to meet the daily demands for drinking water. The Western and Central reservoirs are currently at 55-60 percent but cannot afford to drop.

“We appreciate that our residents are already doing their bit to conserve water – but we need even greater efforts if we are going to avoid bringing in restrictions,” says Kelvin.

“Many councils in New Zealand are already restricting water. If demand from our residents doesn’t reduce over the next few days – our next step would be to ban sprinklers (hand-held hosing only) and introduce water restrictions for odd-numbered houses on odd days and even-numbered houses on even days.”

Council has not introduced water restrictions since 2013 which, says Kelvin, has been achieved by residents responding to calls to conserve consumption.

“We are hoping that this will continue to be the case and that we will get through this tight spot without having to introduce water restrictions.”

Watch the video above for some water conservation tips, or visit our webpage.