Water Standards

You are here > Home > Council A-Z > Water > Water Supply > Water Standards

Water Standards

To ensure you have safe drinking water the Ministry of Health tests and grades the drinking water supplies annually and publishes the results in the Register of Community Drinking-Water Supplies in New Zealand. The current grades for New Plymouth District are:

Plant	Supply zones	Grade	Notes
Inglewood		Aa	Inglewood received an Aa grade after the latest register was published.
New Plymouth		A
	Bell Block	Aa
	Lepperton	Aa
	New Plymouth	Aa	Aa is the correct grade for New Plymouth. There is a typing mistake in the register.
	Urenui/Tikorangi	Aa
	Waitara	Aa
Oakura		Aa
Okato		Uu	Okato is currently being monitored and will be regraded. We expect an Aa grade for this plant.

Note: The present gradings are against DWS NZ 2000.

Grading definitions

A = Completely satisfactory, very low levels of risk (grade applies to the treatment plant)
a = Completely satisfactory, very low level of risk (grade applies to the distribution system)
U or u = Ungraded.

• Ministry of Health drinking-water publications

The drinking water gradings are determined by Ministry of Health. The current gradings, which were reviewed in September 2005, are based on performance against the Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand 2000. 

We are committed to achieving the targets outlined within the new “Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand 2005 (amended 2008)” within the time frames required by the Ministry of Health (MoH).

You can view detailed information about the grading system and the 2007 “Register of Community Drinking Water Supplies in New Zealand” on the MoH website www.moh.govt.nz. You can also find a copy of the Annual Review of Drinking Water Quality in New Zealand 2009/10 which was published online in June 2011. 

The MoH Drinking Water Assessor for Taranaki has recently confirmed verbally that New Plymouth drinking water supplies are again fully compliant for 2010/11

• The treated water from the New Plymouth Water Treatment Plant is continuously monitored for free available chlorine residual, pH and turbidity. Aluminium levels are monitored daily. The Treatment Plant has a Ministry of Health “A” grading.
• The reticulation system is routinely sampled and tested for E-coli organisms and free available chlorine. This microbiological monitoring programme and the test results comply with the requirements of the Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand.  The reticulation has a Ministry of Health “a” grading.

If you require a higher level of treatment than that required by the Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand you will need to install the requisite treatment facilities on your own site as our Bylaw states “If a customer has a particular requirement for an uninterrupted level of service, (flow, pressure or quality) it will be the responsibility of that customer to provide any necessary storage, backup facilities or equipment.”

 

 

Return to top

Subscribe to RSS feeds: http://www.newplymouthnz.com/RSS/WaterStandards.xml