Media release
12 March 2013

Dry spell forces increase to Hutt River water take

The latest spell of dry weather across the region means Greater Wellington Regional Council will today be activating its consent to take extra water from the Hutt River. The regional council is activating this consent in order to conserve water held in its storage lake at Te Marua for as long as possible – to ensure it can continue to meet essential needs of households, businesses and services.

There has been no significant rainfall since early February, which has resulted in low river flows, which will continue to drop without significant rain in the water catchments.

The consent allows for the flow over the Kaitoke Weir to be reduced from 600 litres per second (l/s) to 400 l/s, providing up to an extra 17 million litres (ML) per day. However, what’s available from the Hutt River will continue to reduce day by day until we get significant rainfall into the water catchment. Taking this extra water will reduce demand on the one available storage lake, thus holding more of that last line of supply in reserve for longer – approximately 7-10 days longer without rain and with rivers dropping at the current rate.

The consent was sought as a contingency measure should extremely dry weather conditions occur while the regional council is enlarging and earthquake strengthening the Stuart Macaskill water storage lakes at Te Marua. Granted in 2011 for three years to cover the period of the upgrade work, the consent was not activated last summer as weather conditions were not as dry. The consent has very strict conditions and, when activated, the regional council will increase the frequency of its current environmental monitoring, and conduct a fish passage survey.

Wellington Regional Council Social and Cultural Wellbeing Committee Chair, Nigel Wilson says it’s important to remember that it’s about ensuring that enough water is available as the current dry spell goes on.

“Activating this consent is about ensuring that residents in the four cities have enough water to meet essential needs. All across the country extra measures are being put in place to ensure there’s enough water to go around – we are no different,” says Cr Wilson.

“Our technical advisors believe that reducing the Hutt River’s flow at Kaitoke to 400L/s will not affect its health. We’ll be increasing our monitoring and conducting some extra studies to assess whether there are impacts from this, too.”

While water demand is moderate at present relative to past dry summers, it is more than our rivers and aquifer can supply. The average water use for the month so far is 156 million litres per day (ML/d) compared to a March average over the last three years of 147ML/d. This indicates that demand could be lower with less outdoor water use, however water use for March is still well down from ten years ago – about 16ML/d less, which is equivalent to 40 litres per resident per day.

Councillor Wilson says while demand has been low compared to similar summers, it’s important to conserve water until we receive some significant rain.

“Water use hasn’t been extreme this summer given the weather conditions but we need to make sure that we do a little more to make what we’ve got available last longer. If we all do our bit to conserve some more water then we should be okay,” says Cr Wilson.

A sprinkler ban has been in place since Saturday 9 March and further water restrictions may be required if water use continues to outstrip what’s available and significant rainfall is not received soon.

Greater Wellington Regional Council supplies water to Lower Hutt, Porirua, Upper Hutt and Wellington.
More information about the Hutt River can be found at http://www.gw.govt.nz/the-hutt-river

© Scoop Media

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