Reports starting coming in last night from all over Paraparaumu that the water had gone cloudy. While some residents have claimed there has been no noticeable change in the water, a good selection of the Kapiti Coast community have noticed the cloudy colour. Some even going as far as to say their water had been a brown murky colour as well. While cloudy water that clears eventually is presumably safe to drink, as the temporary fogginess is caused only by extra air in the water, discoloration of the water can be a sign of contamination.

Residents of Pukerua Bay Beach homes have informed the community that their water had in fact had been cloudy. While there hasn’t been anything official stated about this, users on Facebook have said that the water will be on and off in the area over the next few days.

“We’ve seen a few posts of reports of cloudy water in Paraparaumu and Raumati’s tap water last night. On Monday, we repaired a small leak on our bulk main that brings the water from Waikanae water treatment plant to the water reservoir that serves the Paraparaumu and Raumati communities.” said Group Manager Infrastructure Services Sean Mallon

“To do this, we had to turn off the water to the reservoir and drain a large water pipe. When the repair was done, we refilled the main, flushing it and bleeding out the air as we did this. The main was then put back into service and this might have stirred up sediment in the pipes and reservoir, resulting in some homes experiencing cloudy tap water. The water is safe to drink.”

“In Kāpiti, all of our public drinking water supplies are tested and treated with chlorine and high-intensity UV light. We routinely test the drinking water in our networks and the results are all clear.” Said Mallon “To further assure ourselves the water is still safe to drink, we have taken another round of samples across our network again this morning.”

We are aware of a boil water notice in Pukerua Bay and know that this definitely is not related to any of the Kāpiti water supply networks as they are in no way connected.

These series of recent water complaints have not been the first heard on the Kapiti Coast. Complaints over the taste of water here can also be found, where the cloudy water has been described to have an unpleasant earthy taste and a strange smell, causing worry to some. This is because of larger amounts of organic matter that tend to occur when the river levels are low, and the temperature is high. Algae is treated to make sure no harmful toxins are produced, and this cloudy water is still very safe to drink, despite it’s awful taste.

While we can trust that tap water coming from the public supply has been heavily tested and treated to ensure it is clean, we do recommend that you check your tap water before drinking, and possibly boil it before doing so for the time being, just to double check it is safe.