A second Hawke's Bay town has been hit by potentially harmful bugs in its water.
But the Hastings District Council is trying to calm fears of disease by saying the raw supply is already being disinfected before it reaches household taps.
Test results this afternoon for the Hastings town supply produced positive results for E. coli bacteria. E. coli can be an indicator of faecal contamination and can cause gastric illness.
Hastings' water, supplied from an underground aquifer, is quite separate from the Havelock North town supply which was found to have been contaminated with campylobacter and led to more than 4000 people falling ill with symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, headaches and muscle pain.
But the Hastings' supply has been chlorinated since Thursday after a tanker that had been carting Hastings water over to Havelock North 4km away tested positive - at first - for E. coli. A follow-up test was negative, indicating the first test result was false, the council says.
Mayor Lawrence Yule said the Hastings supply had occasionally returned low-level positive E. coli results which, on follow-up testing, were overturned by negative results. There had been no historic problems with the Hastings town supply, unlike Havelock North's water system, which has had two E. coli incidents since 2013 prior to its current crisis from campylobacter contamination.
The council said today's Hastings test results are "totally unexpected and unusual in Hastings". Further samples had been sent for testing and the results were expected tomorrow afternoon.
Council chief executive Ross McLeod said: "We reiterate that the [Hastings] water is safe for drinking because of the chlorine. It does not need boiling before drinking."
In Havelock North, however, where the supply is also being chlorinated, the advice to boil water before consumption remains in place.
An interim scientific analysis indicates contamination from cattle, sheep and deer may have been present in Havelock North's water supply, which in normal times is not disinfected with chlorine. One elderly person has possibly died as a result of the contamination.
