The wet forecast for Easter weekend may be putting a dampener on holiday plans, but there could be a silver lining for Auckland’s water supply, Watercare says.

Rain is forecast for the next few days, with a heavy rain watch in place for Auckland from the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Watercare head of water Sharon Danks says: “We know the wet forecast for Easter is disappointing for many people, but we’re looking on the bright side and hoping for a good amount of rain in our dam catchments.

“The last weather system that came through earlier this month gave our total dam storage a welcome boost, pushing it up four percentage points.

“We’d be very happy to see a similar boost from this wet Easter weather.”

Danks says there’s early indications that both the Hūnua and Waitākere dam catchments could receive up to 100 millimetres or more between now and Friday.

“If this eventuates, we will again see a decent uplift to Auckland’s dam levels. Soil moisture has returned to normal levels, so this also helps our dams to recover.”

Long-range forecasts are predicting rainfall totals for April and May will be above normal.

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“Based on the recent uplift in dam levels, and the rain to come, we can confidently say we won’t be needing to put mandatory water restrictions in place in the next few months,” Danks says.

“Right now, we are hovering around the ‘preparing for drought’ trigger point in our Drought Management Plan, so we will be continuing our water efficiency campaign asking Aucklanders to go easy with their water use until the end of the month.

“We’re also continuing to treat more water than normal from the Waikato River.

“Auckland’s water demand is currently 442 million litres per day for the rolling seven-day average. That’s about where we’d hoped it would be for this time of the year.”

About Watercare:

• Every day, we supply about 440 million litres of safe drinking water to 1.7 million people in Auckland. We also collect and treat their wastewater.
• Over the next 10 years, we will carry out more than 1000 projects to improve and expand our water and wastewater infrastructure – investing an average of $3.8 million every day ($13.8 billion in total).
• Our infrastructure investment programme will help to keep our precious environment healthy by reducing the frequency of wastewater overflows onto land and into waterways.

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