The well heads sit on top of the city’s numerous wells and connect to the wider water supply network. Since then, the city’s drinking water has been treated with chlorine to "provide an extra barrier against potential contamination". "Until our new Water Safety Plan is approved by the drinking water assessors, we need to keep operating under our current Water Safety Plan, which requires us to keep chlorine in the drinking water until the security of all our well heads have been signed off by an expert in well head security and then approved by the drinking water assessor," Beaumont said. Beaumont also said "the timeline for removing chlorine from the city’s drinking water is not entirely within the council’s control". “The next step is to update our new Water Safety Plan and then re-submit it to the drinking water assessor for final review, which we expect to do by the end of this year.”

Source: Otago Daily Times September 07, 2020 22:30 UTC