Latest news with #drinkablewater
RNZ News
20-07-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Ten years of boiling water in Kāeo: 'They just can't rely on the water'
Kāeo chef Anna Valentine demonstrates the rigmarole involved in getting drinkable water. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf It has been 10 years since residents in the small Far North town of Kāeo were placed under a boil-water notice - but it is not a milestone anyone is celebrating. Chef and cooking teacher Anna Valentine, who lives on Kāeo's main street, is among those affected. She said she had never been able to drink from the tap, and at times she could not even use the water for laundry. "I wasn't able to do my washing without it turning brown, basically. And every now and then it would just be super-brown, and then it would get clearer, and sometimes it would go off, and we wouldn't know, so we'd be out of water and we'd be calling up to see what happened. It's just been a roller coaster." Valentine said the colour of the water had improved in recent years, but it was still no good for drinking. In July 2015, Northland's Medical Officer of Health issued a boil-water notice due to levels of E. coli bacteria found in the water. That notice had never been lifted. Kāeo Water supplies just under 30 customers - a mix of homes, businesses and public facilities such as the toilets and community hall - on State Highway 10, the town's main street. Rather than face the cost of constantly boiling water, the Valentines have rigged up a tank for catching rainwater and every day they use it to fill up bottles for drinking water. Valentine said she had organised public meetings and lobbied the council in the past, but little had changed. "The water needs to be drinkable out of the tap, for the kids that go to the community hall, and the people coming through town. They don't know that it's not drinkable. The businesses in town, a lot of them have installed their own rainwater tanks because they just can't rely on the water." Kāeo chef Anna Valentine says her children have never known what it's like to drink out of a tap. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf Until the year 2000 Kāeo's water supply was owned by the Far North District Council. The council sold it to Doubtless Bay Water, which quit in 2008, saying it was not economically viable. It was then taken on by Wai Care Environmental Consultants. Kāeo Water operator Bryce Aldridge said it was difficult keeping up with ever-changing drinking water standards, especially for a small scheme like Kāeo's. "And the government's not assisting with the upgrading that's needed to meet those standards, because of the size of plant that we are." Aldridge said he had never put up the price of water, and only a small minority complained about the quality. "It's actually only one client … I have spoken to the other clients, and this is their fear [if the system is upgraded]: the water price going up, and the battle of having to put fluoride in our water, so a boil water notice actually protects us there." The Ministry of Health has recently ordered the Far North District Council to add fluoride to its Kerikeri and Kaitāia town water supplies, but a spokesperson told RNZ the ministry did not order fluoridation of privately-owned water supplies. Aldridge said the discolouration was caused by iron and manganese naturally present in the source water from the Waikara Stream. Removing iron and manganese completely was difficult and required multiple treatment stages. He said the next step for the water scheme would be to move the plant to a new location, and introduce UV treatment. He told RNZ he had secured a new location just last week, but that had yet to be confirmed. Kāeo's private water treatment plant, on School Gully Road, draws from the Waikara Stream. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf Aldridge said he welcomed media scrutiny because it had caught the attention of Taumata Arowai, the national water authority, and had bumped Kāeo's water supply up its priority list. Taumata Arowai head of operations Steve Taylor said even a small private drinking water supply such as Kāeo's had to meet the requirements of the Water Services Act 2021 and other rules. The authority had sent a letter outlining its expectations in March, but a meeting scheduled that month had been cancelled by the supplier. Expectations included boil-water notice communication with consumers, and providing a confirmed, funded plan for achieving compliance with legal requirements. Taylor said those expectations had not yet been met. The authority had set a new date of 23 July for meeting the supplier and inspecting the plant. Taylor said boil water notices were only meant to be a temporary solution, because over time people could forget and risked drinking contaminated water. The authority could take action if it believed a supplier was not responding adequately to concerns about unsafe drinking water or failed persistently to comply with legal requirements. That could include requiring the local authority, in this case the Far North District Council, to take over the supply. All Kāeo Water's customers are based on the Far North town's main street. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa pou arahi, or cultural manager, Raniera Kaio said the scheme had suffered from buck-passing between the council and the operator as to who was responsible. He believed the only way to fix it was by the council, the operator and iwi working together. "My personal opinion, indeed my professional opinion, is that the operator lacks the resources to fix it. Lacks the resources to fix it alone . It has to be a collaborative solution." Kaio said the water plant had been inundated in the 2007 floods and never fully recovered. The boil-water notice also had a financial effect on the rūnanga, which spent $300-$400 a month on bottled water for staff and manuhiri [visitors]. He said Kāeo's water woes were emblematic of the neglect suffered by many rural, Māori-majority towns. The effects went well beyond the cost and inconvenience of having to boil water or buy it by the bottle. "It's about the dignity of Kāeo, the mana of Kāeo. And whānau in Kāeo have lived with daily anxiety around whether their water is safe to drink, that really affects not only your health, your hauora [wellbeing], but it sort of affects your own self-worth and your identity as being from Kāeo." However, Kaio said he was buoyed by news that Taumata Arowai was about to meet the operator, and hopeful a solution could be found. Meanwhile, Anna Valentine just hoped one day soon her children would be able to drink water out of the tap. "I mean, we live in New Zealand, but it feels like we're in a bit of a third world country up here in Kāeo, having to go out every day and fill our plastic bottles from a water container that we collect off the roof. It's just crazy, actually." Kāeo's boil-water notice is not the longest-running one in the country. A 2024 Drinking Water Regulation Report stated 74 long-term "consumer advisories" - which include boil-water notices - were in place at the end of last year, and 20 council supplies serving a total of 7000 people had advisories in place for three or more years. "The persistence of long-term consumer advisories represents a significant regulatory and public health challenge," the report stated. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Fast Company
30-06-2025
- Science
- Fast Company
New MIT tech turns desert air into safe drinking water
An innovative and potentially impactful new device can turn air into drinkable water, even in the driest climates. The tool, which comes from researchers at MIT, could be a huge step towards making safe drinking water worldwide a reality. Lack thereof impacts 2.2 billion people, per a study on the invention, which was recently published in journal Nature Water. The device was developed by Professor Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, and his colleagues. According to the study, the contraption is made from hydrogel, a material that absorbs water, and lithium salts that can store water molecules. The substance is enclosed between two layers of glass, and at night, pulls water vapor from the atmosphere. During the day, the water condenses and drips into tubes. It's is about the size of a standard window, but even in environments that are hot and dry, it's able to capture water. Zhao's team tested the tool in the driest environment in the U.S. — Death Valley, California. Even in the ultra-dry conditions, the tool was able to capture 160 milliliters per day (about two-thirds of a cup). The success of the model has the scientists thinking on a bigger scale. 'We have built a meter-scale device that we hope to deploy in resource-limited regions, where even a solar cell is not very accessible,' says Xuanhe Zhao, per MIT News. Zhao continued, 'It's a test of feasibility in scaling up this water harvesting technology. Now people can build it even larger, or make it into parallel panels, to supply drinking water to people and achieve real impact.' The new design addresses several issues that past similar devices have come up against. It's better at absorbing water than metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that can also capture water from air. The new design, which has a sophisticated composition and added materials, is also better at limiting salt leakage. During the experiment, that meant that the water collected met criteria for safe drinking water. 'We imagine that you could one day deploy an array of these panels, and the footprint is very small because they are all vertical,' says Zhao. 'Then you could have many panels together, collecting water all the time, at household scale.'
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Kimballton water tested safe following days of uncertainty
KIMBALLTON, Iowa — For the past couple of days, the water in this Audubon County town was not drinkable. In some parts of town on Thursday, it came out of the tap pink in color. Residents were told not to drink the water. Test results came back Friday showing the water was safe to drink. 'We had to take water samples to Council Bluffs for two days in a row, and yesterday was our last sample to take over there, and it came back that there is no bacteria in the water,' said City Councilman Thomas Lake. 'Yes, you can drink the water.' Hy-Vee stepped up with stores in Harlan and Atlantic, each bringing in hundreds of water bottles for the town of 250 people. Des Moines businesses prepare for Mother's Day 'We need to get something done, it doesn't seem like the town gets things done,' said John Nowatzki, a Kimballton resident. 'When we put up the new water tower, that's where it all started.' Nowatzki said he has not drunk water from the Kimballton system in four years. City Council members are working to get the new water system to work properly. The town installed a new water tower and water mains. The problem lately involves a filter. 'We've just run into some unexpected snags, and you know it's created a lot of hardships for our, for our people in town,' said Tony Petersen, a Kimballton City Councilman. 'They understandably get a little bit upset, and I get it, we can certainly understand why.' While the water is now drinkable, city officials are still working to make the entire system function as planned. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
