Havelock North\u2019s water supply had been contaminated with campylobacter after sheep faeces entered it through a bore on Brookvale Road following heavy rain.<\/p>\n
By the time the crisis and Government inquiry was over, more than 5500 people had fallen ill, 45 people were hospitalised and four people had died of causes related to the outbreak.<\/p>\n
An unknown number continue to suffer ongoing health complications to this day.<\/p>\n
The event changed New Zealand\u2019s view of the safety of aquifer-fed supplies and how water from them should be treated.<\/p>\n
Hastings District Council contractors check water mains on Te Aute Rd in Havelock North, after a gastro outbreak in the village on August 12, 2016. Photo\/ Paul Taylor. <\/p>\n
Hastings District Council chief infrastructure officer Craig Thew, who was at the council at the time, said that 10 years on, the focus remained on the people who became ill, those who experienced lasting health effects, and the wider impact on the community.<\/p>\n
Thew said safe drinking water was an essential service a community must be able to rely on.<\/p>\n
\u201cHavelock North residents had every right to trust the public water supply was safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn August 2016, that trust was broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said while figures record the scale of the outbreak \u201cbut cannot fully describe its impact\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some people, the immediate illness passed relatively quickly. For others, the effects were serious, and for some the impacts continued well beyond the outbreak,\u201d Thew said.<\/p>\n
He said the crisis was not experienced in the same way by everyone, and the anniversary would not feel the same to everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people may welcome the opportunity to ensure what happened is not forgotten. <\/p>\n
\u201cOthers may find renewed attention difficult or prefer not to revisit that time. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose experiences belong to the people affected, and council acknowledges and respects the different ways the crisis continues to be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thew said at the time, the aquifer supplying Havelock North was considered secure so the water drawn from it was not treated and there was no residual chlorine requirement in the pipes.<\/p>\n
But the Government\u2019s inquiry found serious shortcomings, including in risk management, water safety planning, record keeping and emergency preparedness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt found the organisations responsible for drinking-water safety had not applied the high level of care and diligence needed to protect public health,\u201d Thew said.<\/p>\n
Then-mayor Lawrence Yule and council chief executive Ross McLeod made a public apology published in Hawke\u2019s Bay Today on August 15, 2016.<\/p>\n
They said the illness and disruption that had been inflicted on many Havelock North residents by the contamination of the water supply had been very serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Council is charged with supplying you safe, reliable water. The Council has failed to do this on this occasion. As Mayor and Chief Executive, we offer our sincere apology for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thew said one of the clearest lessons for the council was that supplying safe drinking water could not be based on assumptions a water source was secure.<\/p>\n
He said protecting public health required several layers, including understanding and managing risks to the source, effective treatment, reliable monitoring, skilled people, clear accountability and systems ready to respond quickly when something went wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crisis also showed that supplying safe drinking water was not simply an engineering or infrastructure matter. It required a public-health approach, with water managed from its source through to the household tap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thew said the response began immediately and developed into a much broader change in the way Hastings District Council managed drinking water.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2017, first as acting mayor and then as mayor, Sandra Hazlehurst made it clear that delivering safe drinking water was council\u2019s number one priority,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The council\u2019s new drinking water strategy was developed from the scientific findings, the inquiry recommendations and the lessons from the outbreak.<\/p>\n
Comprehensive treatment was introduced across all Hastings council supplies. Monitoring and operational controls were strengthened. <\/p>\n
New treatment and storage facilities were developed, small community supplies were upgraded, and the Hastings and Havelock North networks were connected to improve safety and resilience.<\/p>\n
The inquiry found wider problems in the national drinking-water system and called for major change, including mandatory treatment of networked supplies and the establishment of a dedicated drinking-water regulator.<\/p>\n
The Water Services Authority, Taumata Arowai, was established and became the focused national drinking-water regulator in November 2021. <\/p>\n
Its regulatory system now places greater emphasis on risk management, treatment, monitoring, accountability and multiple barriers to protect drinking-water supplies.<\/p>\n
Hastings mayor Wendy Schollum said the events of 2016 reinforced her belief that good local government began with getting the basics right.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince then, council has made major changes to drinking-water treatment, monitoring, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that responsibility does not end when an upgrade is completed. Providing safe drinking water and maintaining essential infrastructure requires constant attention, careful planning, and continued investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schollum said the lessons from Havelock North continued to guide council\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n
Thew said the work done since 2016 did not change what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best acknowledgement council can make is to remember the people affected, continue to own its responsibility, and ensure safe drinking water, public health and community trust remain at the centre of every decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
A quiet contamination<\/p>\n
Sipping a cup of coffee with a mate at a Havelock North cafe followed by a glass of water was a pleasant way to spend an hour on a Thursday morning for Siimon Nixon.<\/p>\n
But the Hastings district councillor didn\u2019t have time to linger. <\/p>\n
It was August 11, 2016, and nominations for the local body elections closed at noon. <\/p>\n
He got that sorted and then went to Hawke\u2019s Bay Today for an interview.<\/p>\n
It was there just four or five hours after that water that he started to feel \u201ca bit queasy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ten years on, Nixon has both vivid and vague memories of the next four or five days.<\/p>\n
\u201cI began to feel worse in the afternoon and eventually took myself off to bed thinking I was coming down with the flu.<\/p>\n
\u201cI woke up in the middle of the night and thought, \u2018what the hell\u2019s going on\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just like all hell had broken loose. Dorothy, my wife, who was sleeping in another room and I can\u2019t remember why, came in. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe bed was a total mess. Dorothy ended up throwing everything out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he hadn\u2019t had the flu very often in his life, but remembered thinking this was an awful dose of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never had anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until Saturday that he discovered the worst.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t something I had, but something we all had.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took him more than a week before he started to feel better.<\/p>\n
Nixon, who has been retained as a councillor by voters in the decade since, said he feels the council reacted in the best way it could to ensure it didn\u2019t happen again. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a problem, and we knew we had to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Havelock North\u2019s water supply had been contaminated with campylobacter after sheep faeces entered it through a bore on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31863,1443,642,264162,6186,66023,537,21659,4522,47034,302,111,43,139,529,69,3272,90,530,6302,11555,6034,1361,223,8229,20110,2742,251257,376,6923,1530],"class_list":["post-566040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-31863","tag-about","tag-august","tag-bug","tag-changed","tag-complacency","tag-crisis","tag-drinking","tag-feel","tag-havelock","tag-its","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-nzs","tag-on","tag-residents","tag-safety","tag-started","tag-ten","tag-that","tag-the","tag-they","tag-thought","tag-thousands","tag-tummy","tag-water","tag-what","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566040","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=566040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}