Some households in Greymouth have run out of water and others are about to after wild weather damaged the electrical system at the town’s treatment plant this morning.
The town’s main reservoir at Omoto is critically low, and the Grey District Council is urging people to keep the taps turned off while engineers try frantically to fix the fault and restart the computerised system.
Mayor Tania Gibson says a 12,000L water tanker is on the way from Hokitika and was due at the Civic Centre carpark by 5pm.
People are asked to bring their own containers and they’ll be limited to 4L per person.
The council is also commandeering as much drinking water as it can form local supermarkets – it’s not possible to bring water in from further afield because all major routes into the West Coast are closed.
Gibson said some small reservoirs around the district were still working but thousands of households supplied by the main reservoir could run out tonight.
She said an expert engineer who was not located on the Coast has been contacted and was trying to reset the electrical water treatment system remotely.
Grey Hospital has back-up water tanks and was coping at this stage, the mayor said.
Local schools were warned they may not be able to open tomorrow – depending on whether the fault was fixed.
The entire West Coast was without power for about four hours this morning from just before 8am as heavy rain and gale force winds battered the region.
By Lois Williams for Local Democracy Reporting
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
