This may take some time

Luggate resident Alastair Stewart was yesterday tending his new lawn with a watering can, following instructions from the Queenstown Lakes District Council.

Luggate residents were surprised by the sudden imposition on Wednesday of water restrictions, preventing hoses and irrigation systems being used to conserve rapidly dropping reservoir levels.

A council spokesman explained yesterday a new bore had been built but was not yet in use because additional monitoring instrumentation was being installed to comply with its resource consent.

"We expect to have it up and running next week. As soon as the bore is operational, it’s expected we will be able to lift the water restrictions."

Luggate’s reservoir has 260cum of storage. The average daily demand is for about 207cum but with peaks reaches 548cum.