Christchurch City Council is receiving fewer complaints about the taste of the city’s chlorinated water supply than they were in April and May, a senior official has said.
Helen Beaumont, the head of strategic policy at the council, told TVNZ1’s Breakfast that disinfection by-products and chloramines had made the water taste different, particularly in autumn.
“Because the supply hasn’t been chlorinated for many decades, we’ve over 150 years of groundwater supply, when we introduced chlorine into the system, it oxidised organic matter that was through the pipes, that was naturally present through our pipework, “she said.
“We got disinfection by products and chloramines and those taste particularly bad.”
“Early in the process, April and May, we were getting a lot of complaints across the city, we’re getting much fewer now because most of that matter has been oxidised.”
Beaumont said the decision was made to chlorinate the city’s water supply after the Ministry of Health implemented much stricter standards following the contamination in Havelock North in August last year.
“The latest inspection found that our bore heads weren’t secure any longer and the Ministry of Health made it quite clear to us that unless we chlorinated, they would direct us to do so,” she said.
Beaumont said the council had a programme rolling out across the city at the moment and we are remediating those bore heads and they were also looking at alternative methods to disinfect the water.
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