Wellington region slapped with sprinkler ban as water usage soars
Friday, 12 February 2021
Most of the Wellington region will come under a sprinkler ban from midnight Friday following high water usage and falling river levels.
Over the last week water usage has consistently exceeded the maximum daily water use target of 170 million litres, and peaked at 195 million litres in one day. Typical daily usage outside hot summer days is around the 155 to 165, Wellington Water spokesman Alex van Paassen said.
The restrictions imposed by Wellington Water apply to Lower and Upper Hutt, Wellington, Porirua and Martinborough, Featherston and Greytown.
A likely return of warm, dry weather is behind the measures, said Laurence Edwards, Wellington Water’s chief advisor for drinking water.
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Most of the region’s drinking water comes from rivers and the Waiwhetu aquifer beneath the Hutt Valley. Drawing excessive amounts of water from these sources could be detrimental to the rivers’ eco-systems.
As river levels decline, water must be drawn from storage lakes at Te Marua in Upper Hutt. Water in the lakes must last until the dry spell is over.
Van Paasen said the lakes were about 90 per cent full, which is good for this time of year, but the agency was limited by how much water it could treat on a daily basis.
But higher water use was “unsustainable” when supply river levels drop, something on the cards should there not be significant rainfall in the catchment in the next couple of weeks, he said.
“One impact of reaching those low levels is that we have to stop extracting water from the streams feeding the Wainuiomata treatment plant. When that happens, it can take 12 million litres to 15 million litres a day out of the supply equation.”