Hastings' new water treatment plant to service 20,000 households

A new water treatment plant and interactive learning centre has opened in Hastings, the culmination of the council's plan to safeguard the city's water supply.

It comes weeks after a cryptosporidiosis outbreak in Queenstown, days after revelations that 84 water suppliers do not have sufficient UV filtering facilities to protect against protozoa organisms; and seven years after the Havelock North water crisis, when four people died and more than 5000 fell ill after the town's water supply was contaminated with campylobacter in 2016.

Since 2016, Hastings District Council has been working to safeguard its water supply, and restore the public's confidence in the process.

Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst said water strategy had been the council's number one priority ever since.

The new Waiaroha facility, on the corner of Hastings Street South and Southampton Street East, has two five-million-litre water tanks, a state-of-the-art treatment plant, and an interactive discovery centre, complete with landscaping - plants, picnic tables and water features, even a wave machine in the moat around one of the tanks.

Water would not flow through the plant until the end of the year, but the discovery centre would open to the public on Saturday.

Hazlehurst said the discovery centre was the first of its kind in the world, and she hoped it would help people understand the importance of water and where it came from.

"It's multi-purpose," she said.

"It's about awareness most importantly. While this is very functional and we needed to have a new pump station, a new treatment station, we also needed to make sure that people care for the water."

Mātauranga Māori had been key in the design process, with local iwi Ngāti Kahungunu having continuous input into the project.

Hastings District Council major projects director Graeme Hansen has been responsible for the delivery of the drinking water upgrade programme for the past five years, culminating in the Waiaroha project.

"Blending engineering, science and mātauranga Māori principles has opened up an opportunity to make our water and processes more visible, and to encourage reflection on where we have come from, sometimes looking back to move forward."

In the height of summer, Hansen said, Hastings would use 11 of the two giant tanks seen at Waiaroha each day.

Here, the water would be extracted from the aquifer from a bore two streets over, and supply about 20,000 households - about half that of the council's other plant at Frimley.

The completely automated process included UV treatment to kill protozoa and round-the-clock, real-time water testing, along with chlorination and fluoridation, and a large window from the courtyard outside through into the plant would allow visitors to see into the process.

"What we have onsite is a state-of-the-art water processing and treatment facility, but it will be interesting to see what state-of-the-art looks like in 10, 20, 50 years' time," he said.

"I'm confident young minds and the next generation will surprise us in this area, and this project is hoping to provide that catalyst and opportunity."