Generic image. Photo: PIXABAY
It will take two years to adequately chlorinate the water supply for 800 Lower Hutt homes, Wellington Water says.
Regulator Taumata Arowai increased the chlorine requirements for drinking water in November 2022.
In March 2023, it was revealed the water being supplied to hundreds of homes in Lower Hutt did not meet the national standards, although it was still safe to drink.
Speaking to Morning Report on Tuesday, Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell said it had been declined an exemption for those homes and it would need to increase the amount of chlorine in the water to those homes.
Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell. Photo: supplied
Haskell said Taumata Arowai had set the bar. Wellington Water respected it, but it would take two years for it to sort a fix.
"That water is safe to drink. It met the old guidelines, the bar's been lifted and rightly so. They are too close to the water treatment plant, which means there's not enough contact time with chlorine and that's what we're going to have to work through; a design to make sure those homes get enough contact.
"That's going to take a couple of years because we need to reconfigure the network so that the water takes longer to flow to the home and gets the right amount of contact time."
Meanwhile, Wellington Water will not be able to properly fluoridate the supply to much of Wellington and Lower Hutt for another three months.
On Monday, it admitted that fluoride levels have not been up to Ministry of Health standards for the past four months.
Those standards were 95 percent, but Wellington Water was operating at about 90 to 95, Haskell said.
She said the pumps were the problem and it had to made a decision in 2022 to put in lesser standard pumps because Covid-19 related delays meant it would take a year to get the good ones in.
"We've got the good pumps on order and they should be here in the next few months."
Those pumps were ordered "a couple months ago", she said.
But Haskell reiterated that there was fluoride in the water, and there was chlorine in the water.
"Your water is safe to drink," she said.
"We're working really hard to get ourselves up to the standards that are set by our regulators.
"That is our job, and we are committed to that."