{"id":564899,"date":"2026-08-10T17:50:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T17:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/564899\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T17:50:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T17:50:35","slug":"ohakune-businesses-hurting-as-water-restoration-still-another-24-hours-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/564899\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohakune businesses hurting as water restoration still another 24 hours away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ohakune without tap water for at least another day<\/p>\n

Checkpoint<\/p>\n

Ohakune water supply expected to return to normal on Tuesday evening, a day later than hoped Schools and eateries closed on Monday, and one motel reported losing a substantial booking District councillor labels outage an embarrassment Mayor says they’ll be an investigation.<\/p>\n

Ohakune will be without tap water until Tuesday evening, after the district council confirmed the outage affecting the central North Island town would last longer than first feared<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was originally expected the supply would resume as normal on Monday evening, but a fix had proven more complicated than expected.<\/p>\n

This meant eateries and schools would spend another day with their doors closed.<\/p>\n

One motel manager told RNZ, the outage was hitting businesses in the pocket.<\/p>\n

“[The] council had earlier been confident that water would be restored by 5pm today,” Ruapehu District Council chief executive Clive Manley said in a statement on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

One of many businesses closed in Ohakune on Monday.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Jimmy Ellingham<\/p>\n

“However, further technical analysis found that repressurising the raw water pipeline too quickly could damage it and cause even longer delays.”<\/p>\n

He said resuming full flow through the pipeline into town too quickly could risk fracturing it, so a slower, more controlled approach was needed.<\/p>\n

“[The] council’s water services contractor, Veolia, has confirmed that the airlock affecting the raw water pipeline has been resolved.<\/p>\n

“Additional water tankers have also been brought in to help speed up the process as much as safely possible.”<\/p>\n

Eatery doors stay shut, motel out of pocket<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

Ohakune town.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Jimmy Ellingham<\/p>\n

On the streets on Monday portaloos replaced paying patrons, and a water tank parked outside the council office for people to get their supplies. It’s estimated more than 5500 water containers were brought to the town for its 1400 residents.<\/p>\n

At The Peaks Motor Inn, manager Remi Butler was hauling water around the rooms on Monday morning.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been bucketing water from the cold spa for flushing the toilets, but we got bottled water from the council for washing the dishes,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We need to do that. We can’t use the spa water for cleaning the dishes.”<\/p>\n

She’s hoping the water supply would return as expected, especially as the outage had cost the business.<\/p>\n

“The holiday makers from the weekend have left, which is normal, but we actually had a big group that was supposed to come tonight – a full house, for two nights, but they cancelled.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think insurance will cover anything like that. We’ll just have to wear it. It’s a big loss, but what can you do?”<\/p>\n

At the water tank Angelina Reyes was filling up three five-litre containers for use in the kitchen at her work, the Alpine Motel.<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

Angelina Reyes filled up water bottles from the council-supplied tank in Ohakune.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Jimmy Ellingham<\/p>\n

There, she first heard there was a problem with the water on Friday, when warnings to conserve were issued.<\/p>\n

“I thought maybe it was a normal glitch but, no, it’s for real.<\/p>\n

“Yesterday, I had guests in my Airbnb and they said, ‘We don’t have water.’ I had a look on the council Facebook page and they said there’s an emergency alert.”<\/p>\n

Despite that, the town’s New World supermarket had remained open, and owner Samuel Fletcher said it was mostly business as usual.<\/p>\n

“We follow food safety procedures for something like this. We’ve got that as part of our food control plan.<\/p>\n

“We’ll just cut out any non-essential tasks until we get back into normal operations with running water.”<\/p>\n

Fletcher said those tasks were to do with deep cleaning.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A water truck in Ohakune supplying drinking water.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Kate Pereyra<\/p>\n

Ruapehu College’s 250 students spent the day away from class, and principal Kris Vine said he was keeping an hour-by-hour watch on the situation.<\/p>\n

“Ideally, we would be open for business and having our students here.<\/p>\n

“Health and safety has to come first, so despite the disruption it’s a learning curve for our kids about the importance of water and emergency. I guess there’s some different learnings our kids can take from an experience like this.”<\/p>\n

He said students always had work to do online, so could concentrate on that. He was at school catching up on administration tasks.<\/p>\n

Investigation confirmed<\/p>\n

Ruapehu mayor Weston Kirton told Morning Report the outage could extend into Tuesday, but after a meeting with officials this morning the news was better.<\/p>\n

\"Ruapehu<\/p>\n

Ruapehu mayor Weston Kirton.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Jimmy Ellingham<\/p>\n

However, by 3pm, Manley’s statement confirmed it was a false dawn.<\/p>\n

The outage was due to damage to the pipe into town, caused by an earthquake<\/a> two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

“The line itself is about 70 years old. It’s up in terrain by the mountain – about 5 kilometres of line that’s had it’s issues at times, but this is fairly new to us that it’s broken.<\/p>\n

“We’ll be having an investigation into what happened.”<\/p>\n

Many locals RNZ spoke to were understanding, but district councillor John Chapman was less so, telling Checkpoint he was embarrassed and appalled this had happened, especially during ski season.<\/p>\n

Kirton acknowledged there would be unhappiness.<\/p>\n

“Some people are quite angry at the fact it’s happened at this time. It always happens on a weekend, of course.<\/p>\n

\"Colin<\/p>\n

Local Clive Young fills a water bottle.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Jimmy Ellingham<\/p>\n

“The people who I’ve being seeing over the past 24 hours have been very co-operative…<\/p>\n

“We really apologise to them for the inconvenience.”<\/p>\n

For now, the town’s 1400 residents, such as Evie Story and her 18-month-old daughter Thea, are making do as best they can.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got a little baby bath at home, so she just goes in the baby bath. The drinking water they’ve given us is really good, so she just has that for her water.<\/p>\n

“It’s not really affecting us that much.”<\/p>\n

Clive Young, who was also filling water containers from the tank near the council, said he was lucky he had a sceptic tank at home so could use the toilet, but he was looking forward to a shower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ohakune without tap water for at least another day Checkpoint Ohakune water supply expected to return to normal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-564899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564899","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=564899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}