A lead contamination scare in a south Otago town is sounding water quality alarm bells around New Zealand, with one expert saying he would refuse to drink the water in some areas.
Earlier this month Dunedin council told the communities of Karitane and Waikouaiti that their water supplies had been returning traces of lead up to 40 times the safe level.
Spikes of concerning lead levels had been present since August, with six of the 90 tests over the last six months showing elevated lead levels.
More than 1,000 people in the area have now had blood tests and the results are expected back soon. In the interim, the communities have been offered free water supplies and free fruit and vegetables.
Although the reason for the contamination is not yet known, cast iron pipes with lead joinings – some more than 100 years old – are suspected of tainting the supply, and 4km of them are currently being replaced by the council.
The scare has caused alarm nationwide, as the water infrastructure in many towns and cities is decades old.
Experts have been appointed by the director-general of health to conduct a rapid review into how the contamination occurred, and the response to it by public health officials.
Water NZ technical manager Noel Roberts, who monitors the country’s water supplies, told Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint programme that councils around the country were closely watching the situation in Otago, as there were thousands of old cast iron pipes nationwide, and limited money for regular lead testing.
Roberts said there are “a lot of ticking time bombs” regarding water infrastructure in New Zealand, especially among cast-iron and asbestos-lined pipes.
“They were expected to have a lot longer lifespan than what they are. They’re finding in the New Zealand environment that they are falling apart prematurely than planned,” Roberts said.
Roberts said councils are frequently reluctant to upgrade water infrastructure as it is costly, and there is no national database of where older and problematic pipes are located, meaning targeting problem areas is impossible.
There were some towns in New Zealand were Roberts refuses to drink the water, as “some of those [councils] have never been compliant in 20 years.”
New Zealanders needed to have a wider conversation about the national quality of their water supply, Roberts suggested. “That would be, I think, a great benefit to New Zealand.”
Contaminated drinking water is not uncommon in New Zealand, with 5,000 people falling ill and four dying in 2016 after sheep faeces contaminated Havelock North’s water supply 430km southeast of Auckland.
The country’s capital city, Wellington, has frequent issues with sewage pouring into the harbour and city streets.
A 2017 government inquiry found that 20 per cent of the country’s tap water was not up to standard, with as many as 750,000 New Zealanders exposed to drinking water that was “not demonstrably safe”. .
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