‘Strange’: Ohinemuri River turns ‘bright orange’, council says it’s contaminated

Friday, 23 August 2024

Waikato Regional Council says the discolouration of Ohinemuri River should be treated as contamination.

Council staff are at the river and are assessing the discolouration.

They are yet to identify the source of the discolouration.

Waikato Regional Council is urging people to treat “bright orange” discolouration of the Ohinemuri River as contamination.

The incident was reported to the council at about 3pm on Friday.

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Senior Incident Response Officer Robert Isaac said worst case scenario is the discoloured water was due to a mine shaft collapse, and old mines contain many heavy metals and contaminants.

Council staff are at the river and are assessing the discolouration.

Isaac said staff were yet to identify the source of the discolouration which appeared to enter the Ohinemuri River downstream of the Waitawheta river.

“Until we can ID the source we need to treat this as worst case scenario as we are getting reports of people standing in the water. If this is an old mine shaft that has blown out than people should not be using or touching the water.”

The council said other scenarios could include a collapsed out forestry dam or other erosion.

A man driving past the affected patch said he never saw such bright colour water in the river.

“It’s strange.”