Level 1 Water Restrictions in place
The Gore District Council has moved to level 1 water restrictions for Gore.
With the new water restriction regime now in place, level 1 means residential, commercial and industrial users need to use hand held watering for grass areas. There are no restrictions on watering gardens, trees or shrubs.
However, 3 Waters Asset Manager Matt Bayliss is urging residents to be mindful of their water consumption.
“We are in a much better position than this time last year but we are going into what is traditionally a hot, dry month.”
The aquifer levels have been steadily declining since early December as rainfall over recent weeks had not extended into the headwaters of the Mataura River.
“As a result the river and aquifer levels have remained low.”
Mr Bayliss said with the No.1 bore at Cooper’s Wells not meeting demand by itself, the secondary well is now operational.
“At this stage we would not expect to have to use the supplementary pumping arrangement from the river for a few weeks yet.“
Water consumption throughout January has remained relatively constant, averaging 3.6 million litres a day, which is below the long-term average summer demand of 3.9 million a day.
While the lower demand was probably mainly as a result of the less than favourable summer the District is experiencing, some of it can be attributed to the Council’s ongoing leak detection work, Mr Bayliss said.
The Council expects to have its new bore at Cooper’s Well operational in March.
“We have finished the hydrological assessment and an application to vary the Council’s water take consent has been submitted to Environment Southland. All going well we expect a decision on the consent variation in late-February,” he said.
For more information about our new water restrictions click here.