A Southland council manager has revealed there are pipes in the district’s water services network which are unaccounted for.

Southland District Council strategic manager water and waste Kevin Johnson made the admission during a meeting on Wednesday when he provided an update to councillors.

In response to a question about how many kilometres of pipes the council had, Mr Johnson said there was about 32,000km, adding there were some the council did not know about.

“There’s so much of it over such a large land surface area, one of the preliminaries that we have to carry out in some locations is to actually establish what the pipe network is, where it is, and who owns it.”

Johnson said the council had inherited schemes from over 50 years ago which sometimes lacked records, but felt it had a good grasp on townships such as Te Anau, Lumsden and Winton.

He confirmed the discovery of pipes was ongoing — “perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m being honest”.

There was some good news for elected members, as Mr Johnson’s report included recent information from national water regulator Taumata Arowai which showed good outcomes for wastewater overflows.

It showed Southland District Council was in a three-way tie for the fewest overflows per 100km of wastewater pipe — logging just one.

In other parts of the region, Gore District Council also scored well with two, while Invercargill City Council had eight.

The worst record belonged to Waitaki District Council, which had 91 overflows per 100km.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.