Councillor demands action on dirty water

West Otago councillor Peter McPherson is demanding action over the problem of dirty water, which affected hundreds of Tapanui residents last weekend.

Cr McPherson yesterday attended the Clutha District Council meeting with a jam jar of dirty water as evidence of what had been pumped through the town's domestic supply.

"The people of Tapanui shouldn't have to put up with this," he said, holding up the jar.

"People want to know what sort of compensation they will get, because they have washed their clothes in this water.

"We need to find a way of stopping that sort of thing happening."

The Tapanui water reservoir dropped last week following a period of high demand.

Fulton Hogan's attempts to increase the treatment plant's production rate was unsuccessful and the level continued to fall, activating an alarm, which was acknowledged by the alarm monitoring service, but not passed on to Fulton Hogan.

Cr McPherson asked the council if they could call into question the contractor.

"Anyone who is a contractor and makes a mistake has to front up," he said.

"I would question whether they had the number of staff they said they had. Their system failed to correct this. The people of Tapanui shouldn't have to put up with this."

In response to Cr McPherson's questions, manager district assets Jules Witt said two things went wrong.

"The attempt by Fulton Hogan to increase the flow rate was unsuccessful, and the answering service failed to pass on the alarm to the contractor."

He said the council was reviewing the incident with Fulton Hogan, to ensure these circumstances did not occur again.

- Rachel Taylor

rachel.taylor@odt.co.nz