Dunedin's council is not too fond of being held up as an example of failure in running water services.
Several Dunedin city councillors are sensitive enough about news coverage of last year’s lead scare affecting residents of Waikouaiti, Karitane and Hawksbury Village without an added twist — that it arguably helps show why Three Waters reform is needed.
The Otago Daily Times invited the Department of Internal Affairs to draw a connection between the lead scare and the imperative for reform of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services.
"New Zealanders have every right to expect that their drinking water is safe," a department spokesman said.
"It shouldn’t take a lead contamination scare, sewage overflows in the streets of our capital city, widespread boil-water notices or a deadly campylobacter outbreak in Havelock North to drive the investment needed to keep our people safe.
"Independent analysis shows that overall, New Zealand’s Three Waters infrastructure has not been well maintained, it is ageing and it requires a level of investment that is beyond most councils.
"The Government’s plans to establish four publicly owned water services entities will ensure the financial resources and capability is in place to make this investment to protect our communities and the environment and that it is affordable for households and businesses."
The department spokesman could hardly have captured any better an interpretation of events that rankles with Dunedin city councillor Jim O’Malley.
Cr O’Malley would prefer the council be held up as an exemplar of something else — being proactive.
"Normally, heavy metals are not measured in drinking water systems," he pointed out at a council meeting on February 22.
Testing for metals was carried out from July 31, 2020, ahead of a planned upgrade of the Waikouaiti water treatment plant. It was considered the data could help determine the optimum level of soda ash dosing, which could reduce corrosion in the pipes network.
Such testing had not been considered necessary for ensuring safe supply of drinking water and Cr O’Malley, an opponent of some aspects of the Government’s reform programme, said the reward the council received for its proactivity was getting "classified as being useless".
"We went out in front and we got burnt for it."
The man who investigated the council’s handling of the lead scare, former state services deputy commissioner Ross Tanner, agreed the council had been forward-looking. However, its staff had not thought through well enough what they should do if they found a high level of a particular substance, he said.
Council processes were found wanting when sampling revealed intermittent elevated lead levels.
However, in the end, it was shown a lead problem of any significance was likely limited to private plumbing and customer connections.
Mr Tanner noted New Zealand’s new drinking water regulator, Taumata Arowai, would be interested in the Dunedin experience and this would have national implications.
The council’s handling of the lead scare was "pretty good", overall, and he praised much of what happened after residents of the three communities were told on February 2 last year they should not drink their tap water, nor use it for food preparation. That included alternative water supplies being set up, increased sampling and safe reestablishment of the original supply after a six-month break.
"Dunedin, whether you like it or not, will be looked at as an exemplar of perhaps what not to do, but also, on the positive side of things, what other councils should be doing if a situation like this were to happen in their patch."
Where this story starts
An outbreak of gastroenteritis in Havelock North, Hawke’s Bay, in 2016 shook confidence in the safety of drinking water supplies. Some 5500 of the town’s 14,000 residents are estimated to have become ill with campylobacteriosis, at least 45 were sent to hospital and the outbreak may have contributed to three deaths.
A government inquiry accepted that "the risks to drinking water can be sporadic and poorly understood and thus provide fertile ground in which complacency can grow among drinking water suppliers, local body politicians whose councils in many cases own the water infrastructure ..." - reform was coming.
What happened in Dunedin?
Waikouaiti Coast Community Board chairman Alasdair Morrison summed up the moment. It was 3pm on February 2 last year and he was sitting in the mayor’s lounge having a pre-agenda meeting when the city council’s infrastructure and development general manager Simon Drew walked in and announced, "there’s lead in the water".
"She was all on for young and old for the next two or three weeks after that," Mr Morrison said.
He was to the fore at a public meeting that attracted hundreds of people just three days after the affected communities’ residents were told to stop drinking tap water or using it for food preparation until further notice.
Health officials, worried about the possibility residents could have been exposed to lead in their water for some time, quickly organised for blood tests to be carried out.
Lead is a cumulative toxin and children aged up to 6, older people, pregnant women and their babies are the most susceptible to any adverse health effects.
The blood tests showed there had not been significant exposure to lead from the water.
It turned out that, although six lead exceedances had been recorded from water tested between July 2020 and the end of January 2021, the council was able to conclude there had not been widespread lead in its drinking water network.
Customer pipes, fittings and tapware leaching lead were the most likely cause of high lead readings at the Waikouaiti Golf Course and Karitane Bowling Club.
The most likely cause of a high reading at the Waikouaiti raw water reservoir was the sample being affected by lead in sediment, after a spike in water turbidity. Sediment is filtered out by the water treatment process.
All of this was a relief, but Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins understood well what the stakes had been.
"As a human being ... particularly as a parent, the mere idea that infrastructure we were responsible for could have caused harm to young families, in particular, made me feel physically ill," he said.
What went wrong?
The council’s most famous error was probably a startling lead reading not being noticed for weeks because the sole recipient officer was on leave. A December 8, 2020, sample result from the Waikouaiti Golf Club received by the council on December 18 showed lead at almost 40 times the maximum level considered acceptable and a sample from the Karitane Bowling Club the same day comfortably exceeded the limit — this was not picked up until January 5, 2021.
Almost overshadowing this on February 2 last year was Three Waters group manager at the time Tom Dyer mistakenly referring to the Waikouaiti reading being just four times the acceptable level during an RNZ interview. It was two days before the council corrected this.
In the interim, on February 3, the council disclosed something else communications staff had not known the day before — that the first elevated lead result had been received on August 14, 2020, from a July 31 sample.
This test prompted the council to inform Public Health South (PHS) and to start checks for contamination in the network. Everything seemed in order for a while — apart from an October 9 exceedance at the golf club, which was not passed on to PHS until January 22 the next year — before the unexpected drama associated with the December 8 tests.
Mr Tanner said council chief executive Sandy Graham should have been told about those high lead readings. She did not learn of them until February 1 last year — a day before the notice was issued advising residents to stop drinking the water.
Mr Tanner highlighted deeper problems.
Metals data was recorded separately from other sampling results pertaining to adherence with drinking water standards.
Staff had a sound grasp of how to deal with microbiological contamination, but seemed to lack understanding about requirements related to other substances, such as metals, Mr Tanner said.
"As a consequence, there were delays in reporting some of the adverse metals testing results to the drinking water assessor, as well as to the public health officials."
At a meeting on January 27, the possibility of going public was discussed.
After an accumulation of infrequent, elevated lead readings, a January 20 sample result from the Waikouaiti raw water reservoir received by the council on January 29 prompted the Southern District Health Board medical officer of health to recommend a do-not-drink notice.
Lack of information flowing to the council’s executive leadership team through January put the council on the back foot as it started the next month facing what looked like a brewing crisis. Mr Hawkins later apologised on behalf of the council for that.
Among factors that were unhelpful for the response was council staff had requested as early as September 19, 2020, that laboratory network Eurofins set up an alert system. This would have got around the single-point dependency that became a problem, but it was not implemented until after the notice was issued.
Public Health South did not know it was dealing with lead exceedances from more than two dates until January 22 last year.
PHS sought advice from Environmental Science and Research and the Ministry of Health, because it had no background in understanding lead levels in water.
A change to the drinking water assessor coming from Wai Comply, instead of PHS, from September 2020 may have contributed to communication issues, although that does not explain why the council did not initially pass on all the information it should have.
Reflecting on why there had been delays in notifying drinking water assessors of some results, council staff explained they had not been familiar with notification or compliance processes required for metals, Mr Tanner said.
What went right?
Mr Morrison described the six-month period from February last year as frustrating, annoying, confusing, a nuisance and a learning experience.
Mr Hawkins said a highlight of the response was "the strength of the manaakitanga that swung in behind our residents".
Seven tankers were on the road within three hours on February 2 last year. Later, 17 community water tanks were installed in the three affected communities. Plastic containers were provided, enabling residents to take water home from the tanks.
Public health officials organised blood tests for residents.
The public meeting on February 5 was sometimes tense and Mr Hawkins conceded residents were completely justified in the way they reacted to the news they had received.
One thing arising from it was provision of free fruit and vegetables, as it had been unclear if produce from residents’ gardens was safe.
Mr Tanner said the welfare response stood as an example of what could and should be done by other councils if they were to face a similar situation. The council’s response after the notice was issued was about as good as could be hoped for, he said.
Sampling was increased as part of an extensive effort by the council to get to the bottom of any contamination problem. Monitoring equipment was bought. The council also accelerated replacement of old pipes in Waikouaiti.
In its rapid review last year of the lead scare, the Ministry of Health made an observation worth noting about urgency in responding to results for substances such as lead. Small or single exceedances rarely had an acute effect on the health of the community. Detection of E. coli required a swift response, but exceedances of chemical parameters usually allowed more time for gathering information, intensive sampling and analysis.
The ministry highlighted household tapware and pipe fittings containing lead were still being imported and widely used. Dunedin deputy mayor Christine Garey said when she was selecting kitchen tapware, she had a hard time establishing if it met the New Zealand standard. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is to consult from May 2 about proposed changes to the Building Code related to plumbing.
Mr Tanner had five recommendations for the council and three had been implemented already. The other two — integrating water risks into the council’s risk management register and consideration of how water quality testing results might be released publicly in future — were being worked on.
Councillors’ reactions
A loyalty theme was apparent at the February 22 council meeting.
Cr Mike Lord did not seem to realise he contradicted Mr Tanner’s report when he concluded practically everything staff did was "timely and appropriate".
Cr O’Malley was clear about where he stood.
"I am proud to stand beside the Three Waters team," he said.
Several councillors paid tribute to Mr Dyer and lauded his efforts.
No councillor said whether they agreed with Mr Hawkins that the communities had deserved to know about the elevated lead readings sooner.
To be fair, the council putting itself on the back foot was touched on and discussion was quite broad. Between them, Crs Sophie Barker and Steve Walker established which review recommendations had been implemented so far and what the hierarchy was. The mayor and Crs Barker and Carmen Houlahan demonstrated empathy with the affected communities.
It was confirmed staff had been frank with the independent reviewer and lessons had been learnt.
A broader issue
The Internal Affairs spokesman said information from the Dunedin City Council indicated it had underinvested in renewing its Three Waters network in recent years.
"Many other councils are in a similar situation."
The Dunedin council’s planned 10-year capital spend for Three Waters went from $305million in 2018 to $562million in 2021. Even so, it would be a stretch to argue underspending led to the lead scare.
Where to from here?
Design work for the Waikouaiti water treatment plant upgrade is under way and the council aims to start construction in September. It could be finished by early 2024.
Taumata Arowai plans to visit the plant and to have discussions with the council about its experiences.
"The introduction of the new Water Services Act 2021 provides more robust notification and response requirements on suppliers of drinking water and testing laboratories," a Taumata Arowai spokeswoman said.
The regulator is consulting the public about chemical testing requirements, including for lead, in source water and distribution networks. That ends on Monday.
It had also started scoping work about possibly lowering the lead limit. It expected to start consultation on that mid this year, the spokeswoman said.
On the matter of Three Waters reform, Cr O’Malley is an opponent of establishing the regional water entities and taking control away from councils. Dunedin councillors voted 8-7 last month to join a group of councils advocating consideration of alternative models. That group’s chairwoman, Manawatu Mayor Helen Worboys, said the Government had presided over a flawed and undemocratic process.
"Whichever way you cut it, this proposal remains, at its heart, simply a confiscation of community assets without compensation."
Meantime, Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta is considering feedback from an accountability and governance working group. She has conceded the cartoonish way councils were blamed in government advertising for water problems missed the mark.
The Government is to introduce legislation this year to set up the water entities.
Recommendations from investigator Ross Tanner
• Council staff need to be familiar with requirements for water quality monitoring and testing set out in the Water Services Act 2021 and any future regulations or instructions from Taumata Arowai.
• Make sure adverse water sample results are reported to the council’s executive leadership team.
• Ensure procedures for water quality and safety risks are clear in the council’s water safety plan.
• Management of water risks is integrated into the council’s risk management register.
• The council should consider when and how information about water quality testing results is released publicly.
