A young family in Palmerston battling the council over their wet and mouldy home have been forced to dig trenches to drain away excess water.
Quentin McGhie and Vanessa Barsby live with their two children at the property, which is riddled with high moisture levels and visible mould, even during dry weather.
They say testing showed the water was high in chlorine indicating it is leaking from the Waitaki District Council water supply.
But the council says it has done its own investigations, which did not identify any leaks.
In the meantime, Mr McGhie said he and his family are "trapped".
"We can’t sell and move on. We can’t afford to go anywhere else.
We just don’t know how we’re going find our way out of this."
The issue became so bad he had to dig trenches in their paddock and a large hole beside their house to help drain the water.
"We used to have half a foot of water under my house.
"Sometimes it took two to three hours to pump the water out, it was that bad."
The wet grounds also contributed to a tree being blown over a few years ago that narrowly missed their house.
The root cause of the issue was elevated moisture levels underground.
However, when Mr McGhie bought the property in 2018 it was "bone dry".
He believed the water was leaking from the council’s wastewater pipes and running underneath their property.
The couple had been going back and forth with the council for almost three years to rectify the issues, to no avail.
"Trying to get them to come and find the issue that’s getting on to our property has been nothing but a headache.
"We’ve been flogged off and discarded."
The couple ordered independent testing of the water in May this year.
It was found it to be high in chlorine, indicating it was treated water, Mr McGhie said.
"It’s not rainwater; chlorine doesn’t come from the sky."
A letter from a law firm acting on behalf of the Waitaki District Council disputed those findings.
"The regular chlorine content of council’s water supply is between 0.8 and 1ppm," it read.
"Council considers that a higher reading (such as the 2.92ppm, 4.43ppm and 3.8ppm readings that were recorded during the May 2025 visit to your clients’ property) would most likely result from incorrect use of the meter, or from a source of chlorine unrelated to council’s water supply."
Waitaki District Council director of natural and built environment Roger Cook said it has completed "multiple investigations" of the water supply and wastewater infrastructure.
"These investigations have not identified any leaks from council infrastructure that could cause the excess moisture at the property.
"Council is, therefore, not aware of any repairs to its networks that could help with moisture at this property.
"Council has communicated the results of these investigations to the property owners."
