Napier residents were told not to drink dirty tap water due to shortages

Napier is at risk of running out of water because demand has skyrocketed and the city council is warning residents not to drink dirty or cloudy tap water.

Water use has already increased to summer amounts, and due to low rainfall this spring, stored water levels have dropped to summer levels, the Napier City Council said.

The city council has started drilling another drilling to keep the levels high, but warns that this could foul the water.

He said that some homes had had high levels of a chemical called manganese in their tap water.

Manganese deposits in pipes can form black solids in the water that can turn it cloudy, and if this happens, it should not be consumed or used to wash clothes.

The council said that if people had dirty water, they should open an outdoor tap for 15 minutes to clean it.

If there is no outdoor faucet, they can use a cold water faucet indoors, and if that doesn’t fix it, they have asked residents to call to alert them so they can flush the pipes onto their street.

The City Council said that despite the water shortage, it was important to clean the pipes by letting the water run for 15 minutes if the water was dirty, as clean water was the highest priority.