Council staff clearing the site of the broken pipe on the Ōpihi River in preparation for its replacement. Photo: Timaru District Council / Supplied
The presence of a number of threatened species has held up vital water infrastructure, forcing more than 150 Canterbury households to boil their water for the last 18 months.
A hole was found in the pipe connecting Waitohi to Timaru's new Downlands Water scheme in 2021, but work was still yet to begin on its replacement.
Lynley, a Waitohi resident, had been on a boil water notice since December 2021.
"It's impossible to keep it up with everything you need to boil water for. Anything you use water for [drinking or eating] should be boiled," she said.
"It's costing us. Some of the people are buying water, there's a lady down the road she's got six people in her household - she can't possibly boil water for all of them.
"My other neighbour spends $30 a week on bottled water and that's just drinking alone - you've still got to brush your teeth and do all that sort of stuff with it."
The current water source was coming from the old water treatment plant, which was supposed to be decommissioned last year.
It stopped meeting drinking water standards for protozoa (parasites that can cause the likes of giardia) when the standards were updated in 2021.
Boiling the water kills any protozoa that may be present, thus making the water safe to drink.
Lynley said Timaru District Council's communication about the broken pipe had been shocking. Residents of the small community received the boil water notice at different times.
She was told to boil her water three weeks after some of her neighbours, she said.
A year later, Lynley went to the council office in person to ask for information.
"I said, 'Well, I'm here now,' and the [council] lady said, 'No, you need to put it in writing and you'll hear something back.'
"I wrote asking if we could get a rebate since we're paying for our water. We've been paying our rates for the last year and a half but we haven't been given reasonable drinking water.
"I put it in writing right there on the desk and passed it to the lady, but never heard anything back from them."
'Important taonga species' in the way
Canterbury Regional Council consent planning manager Aurora Grant said the pipe was in a difficult spot - running underneath the Ōpihi River.
"It does involve drilling under the river and accessing areas that are habitated by the pekapeka native bat populations," she said.
"We've also got some really important taonga species like our banded dotterels, tuna - eels, and salmon spawning sites there."
The consents to replace the broken pipe were processed under urgency earlier this year, Grant said.
Timaru District Council infrastructure group manager Andrew Dixon said it took some time to collect the data needed to apply for the seven consents required for work to start.
"We had to do a lot of ecological studies around the wildlife in the area. That included in the river with the fish and also the bats, in particular, that live in the trees around that river," he said.
"We also had to do archaeological assessments, so all this took time."
Dixon said now it had the consents, the council was looking for a contractor to do the job.
"It's a bit of a moving feast at the moment because of the consenting issues, [and] we're heading into winter with high river flows," he said.
"The work is being tendered at the moment. We have done some site clearing and we're working through it so we're hoping to get that boil water notice off as soon as possible but we don't have an exact date at this stage."
As for the council's communication, he said letters were sent to residents, leaflets were dropped in letterboxes and frequently asked questions and updates were posted to the council's website and Facebook pages.
"We'll be setting up an information board as well, in the Waitohi Hall. It's very hard getting communications out in an effective way to everybody because everyone communicates in different ways.
"If we've missed some people, then I apologise for that. They can call us and we'll happily give them the answers."
No refunds
But Dixon said there would not be compensation in the form of rates rebates for the 157 affected Waitohi households.
"We're heavily investing in providing good quality water and that comes at a cost," he said.
"Rates are basically a tax in many ways … and we have to spread that cost across all the users of a particular [water] scheme.
"These residents will receive the high quality water, eventually."
Timaru District Council had recently upgraded its Te Moana and Downlands water supplies at a cost of $20 million and $25-30m respectively, Dixon said.
The Waitohi pipe would connect residents to the Downlands scheme, which came online last year.
It's not yet known how long the $1m replacement job will take.