Tapanui's water treatment alarm-monitoring system came under scrutiny from members of the West Otago Community Board in Tapanui yesterday.
Contractor Fulton Hogan staff members Dean Scott and Keryn Garside presented the Tapanui reservoir water utilities review to the board.
The report was prepared after thousands of litres of dirty water were pumped through the town's pipes, affecting hundreds of Tapanui residents during the first weekend of December last year.
The board yesterday wanted to know how the problem could be prevented in the future.
December's low-level water alarm arrived in the middle of a group of about 20 alarms, Mr Garside said.
The alarms were indicating issues such as Ph level imbalances, which were not of high priority, and the low-level alarm was not noticed, he said.
Board member Jon Herbert said the alarm being missed because the monitoring centre was dealing with so many alarms was not a very good excuse.
Cr Peter McPherson said the alarm-monitoring system had not worked because the alarm had been acknowledged but not acted on.
"You can have as many processes . . . in place as you like, but if the people don't do the job, it's pointless."
Mr Garside said the set time delays between when an alarm came through the system and when action was taken had been reviewed.
Fulton Hogan was working on getting the alarm numbers down so any alarm that went to the system was meaningful.
