The Queenstown Lakes District Council announced earlier this month it would chlorinate the water supply in Lake Hawea, Glendhu Bay and Arrowtown from December until March 2017 as a precautionary measure.
Chlorination was expected to start in Lake Hawea today. About 30 people attended the Hawea Community Association meeting on Tuesday night where the chlorination issue was discussed.
Many of those at the meeting were frustrated with a lack of information from the council about when exactly the chlorination would start. Hawea Community Association chairman Paul Cunningham said the lack of information from the council was disappointing, as the community had made its opinion very clear.
"There are people who want to avoid the chlorinated water completely, which is very hard to do if you don’t know if it’s in there or not."
Mr Cunningham said he now told people to treat the water as though it had been chlorinated, even though he was not sure himself.
A public meeting would be held on January 21 at the Lake Hawea Community Centre where the water issue would be one of the main topics of discussion.
"People in Hawea are very proud of their water, or they were."
A letter from the council was sent to Lake Hawea residents earlier this week but less than half of the residents at the meeting had received it.
A council spokeswoman said the remaining letters were hand-delivered on Wednesday by staff members because the council’s database captured only ratepayers, not residents, and the letters needed to reach everyone in Lake Hawea, not just property owners.
At the community meeting, Wanaka Community Board chairwoman Rachel Brown said she had invited the council to send staff to the meeting but the invitation had not been accepted.
Most residents now accepted what the council was doing but it needed to be a bit more upfront about it, she said.
Ms Brown said she was personally against chlorine being added to the drinking water but understood the situation the council was in.
The council reviewed the risk to the public from non-treated water supplies after Public Health South asked local authorities to consider the chlorination of all residential water supplies. Permanently chlorinating all residential water supplies in the Queenstown Lakes district would be investigated next year.
