Submission by Water New Zealand on the Draft Terms of Reference for the Government Inquiry into the Havelock North Water Supply Contamination Incident

The events at Havelock North have not occurred in a vacuum, but against a context of a developing strategy intended to prevent such an incident. Prior to 1990, New Zealand relied on guidelines prepared by the World Health Organisation to provide guidance for water suppliers and regulators on ensuring the quality of drinking-water supplies.

In 1991, contamination of the Waterloo reservoir in Lower Hutt prompted the development of a New Zealand-specific drinking-water strategy and the release in 1993 of the first public health grading criteria. In 1995, the first of a new generation of New Zealand-specific drinking-water standards was released. The need for this review was reinforced by the 1993 Milwaukee cryptosporidiosis incident, in which over 400,000 people were made ill and at least 104 died.

There have been three subsequent editions of the standards (2000, 2005, 2008) and a number of other ‘tools’ that today make up the strategy