Water Supply

What we want to see

  • To ensure that our communities are provided with reliable and sustainable potable water supplies.

Why we do it

  • To provide a constant, adequate, sustainable and high quality water supply to Kaipara’s reticulated areas;
  • Clean, safe water is essential for communities and local economic development; and
  • Public water supplies ensure communities receive water at the cost of production.

What we do

The Kaipara District Council operates four community water supply schemes for Dargaville (including Baylys), Glinks Gully, Ruawai, and Maungaturoto. These schemes are for the purpose of providing these communities with a constant, adequate and sustainable potable water supply. There is also a small scheme in Mangawhai.

The Council owns and maintains the water supply network. The Water Supply Activity covering:

  • Collection of raw water;
  • Treatment of raw water to produce suitable quality and quantities of drinking water; and
  • Distribution of treated water to the point of supply to the customer, to consistently meet specific flow, pressure and quality standards. This includes water required for emergency fire-fighting services for urban area in Dargaville.

Council’s Water Supply Activity also includes other responsibilities and through their professional and physical works contracts, Council undertakes the following:

  • Asset Management;
  • Customer Services;
  • Treatment Plant Operation and Maintenance;
  • Network Operations and Maintenance;
  • Capital and Refurbishment Programme;
  • Water Billing; and
  • Consent Monitoring and Compliance.

The level of service

The supply of water is discretionary and defined by historic circumstances specific to the communities that comprise the District. The preferred policy is that except where current systems supply to urban communities, households should expect to provide their own water supply through harvesting of water.

The level of service for water supply is:

  • Council will continue to provide water as is currently supplied within the District;
  • The Council will provide water to Drinking-water Standards for New Zealand 2005 (NZDWS) over the authorised timeframe;
  • Fault response time to outages will make up less than 1% of supply time;
  • The Council will not extend its reticulation areas within the District to include new residential areas;
  • Where there are proposals for new commercial and industrial areas, the Council will consider supporting that economic development through the water supply as part of a rezoning proposal, on a cost-recovery basis;
  • The Council will comply with Resource Consents in respect of water takes;
  • Services to customers from the four community water supply schemes will be reliable and dependable; and
  • Council will actively manage minimisation of water losses.