High Risk Health Warning For People With Own Water Supply

Te Whatu Ora Public Health Unit for Waikato would like to remind people that have their own supply of drinking water to their household, that it is important to ensure that it is safe following recent weather events.

Safe drinking water is vital for the good health of you and your family and the people who visit your home. Water used for drinking, teeth cleaning, hand washing, bathing, showering, food preparation, and cooking needs to be free from harmful germs and chemicals.

If you store your drinking water in a tank, it is important that you check for any foreign matters that may have been drawn into the tank and are potentially contaminating the water within the tank. To disinfect your tank use household plain bleach (not scented varieties as Janola). For calculating the dose of bleach needed to disinfect please see Page 34 of https://www.esr.cri.nz/assets/WATER-CONTENT/ESR0940-Household-water-supply.pdf . Leave untouched for 24 hours to allow the chlorine to work.

If you collect drinking water from your roof, you will need to check the gutters for any leaves and other material that may have become lodged in the spouting. All spouting needs to be clean and the roof itself checked for any debris, sediment or animal excrement. We do recommend using a first flush divider, this to remove the initial contaminates before they go into your tank.

If you source your water from a stream or spring please be aware that this source may be very contaminated at the moment, so ensuring that you have an adequate form of treatment in place is absolutely essential for the health of you and your family.

It is advised that if you have filters in place, then we suggest changing these, as a lot of material could have blocked these and potentially lessening their ability at protecting your supply.

All other forms of treatment as ultraviolent disinfection lights will potentially need the bulb cleaned or even replaced, to ensure it does what it is supposed to do.

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