Haruru resident Aaron Stott said the water has a foul smell and a bad taste, particularly during summer. <\/p>\n
\u201cAround this time of year, the water just gets really smelly and tastes like it\u2019s just come out of the river. So, we pretty much switch to drinking bottled water, because we just can\u2019t drink that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt smells like a swamp\u2026no one\u2019s ever said anything and nothing has been done about it as far as I know. And no one has explained why it\u2019s like that.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said many of his friends in the area also opt for bottled water for drinking. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I\u2019m paying my water rates, 580 bucks a year and, you know, half the time it\u2019s undrinkable.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sam Stewart said the water has been \u201clike that\u201d for years. <\/p>\n
\u201cI live in Kawakawa and I drink rainwater, but I have friends in Paihia and I never drink their tap water or at restaurants [there]. It literally tastes like it\u2019s from a riverbed.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said the water in Kawakawa has a strong chlorine smell.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least you think it\u2019s clean.\u201d <\/p>\n
Council head of infrastructure Tanya Proctor said planning is underway to move and upgrade the water treatment plant for the Paihia-\u014cpua Waitangi supply. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe council did undertake a carbon dioxide treatment project at the treatment plant and in a public statement suggested this would reduce odour and taste issues related to the naturally occurring organic compound geosmin. Unfortunately, that was not correct. <\/p>\n
\u201cA carbon dioxide treatment unit helps to control pH levels in the raw water. While this does improve this water treatment process and would have improved taste and odour, the impact for consumers would have been very limited.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the only way to remove geosmin-related taste and odour problems is through a similarly named process \u2013 \u201cpowdered activated carbon dosing\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis process will be included in the new treatment plant planned for the Paihia-\u014cpua-Waitangi supply. It should be noted that while the earthy or musty odour and taste produced by geosmin is unpleasant, it is a harmless chemical that is produced by blue-green algae present in the river water.\u201d <\/p>\n
Last month the council issued a boil water notice for the supply, after E. coli was detected in the water. <\/p>\n
The Water Services Authority – Taumata Arowai was notified of the notice. Head of operations Steve Taylor confirmed they are aware of the council\u2019s new water treatment plant plans. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe FNDC has advised that a new water treatment plant is in the design phase with a detailed design expected by February 2026. The building of a new treatment plant will address the taste and odour issues referred to with the inclusion of powdered activated carbon dosing.\u201d <\/p>\n
The council will investigate securing land for the plant before moving the project into detailed design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haruru resident Aaron Stott said the water has a foul smell and a bad taste, particularly during summer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17248,696,5205,7557,528,117,111,43,139,529,69,132457,4517,2171,4885,530,79790,2249,48499,4468,6859,2766,132458,14043,376,1316,6730],"class_list":{"0":"post-219908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-17248","9":"tag-announced","10":"tag-council","11":"tag-district","12":"tag-far","13":"tag-new","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-north","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-paihiapuawaitangi","20":"tag-past","21":"tag-plans","22":"tag-plant","23":"tag-residents","24":"tag-smell","25":"tag-soon","26":"tag-taste","27":"tag-thing","28":"tag-told","29":"tag-treatment","30":"tag-unpleasant","31":"tag-upgrade","32":"tag-water","33":"tag-when","34":"tag-would"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}