Opinion: It was frustrating to hear TV news report that it had obtained ‘exclusive details’ of what is clearly an important review of the NZ Defence Force’s response to Cyclone Gabrielle, without making the source documents available.
I don’t know about others, but I would prefer to read the review myself, as opposed to reading what someone else tells me what the report says.
I assume it will be released at some stage, and I am sure it will find its way into a ‘review of reviews’ as promised by the National Emergency Management Agency.
But in the meantime, it clearly raises many concerns.
We are told it reveals that water tanks delivered by the army after the cyclone weren’t able to be used for drinking, because the Defence Force is “not a ‘certified’ drinking water supplier”.
What? Why on earth not? Did anyone from the water regulator, Taumata Arowai, think to tell the army that they had to be certified before they could deliver much-needed water after a disaster that has wiped out critical infrastructure?
I remember potable water being delivered in tankers after the Christchurch earthquakes – is that no longer allowed? Surely that can’t be right.
I know why the regulatory changes were made after the contamination of the Havelock North water supply. Thousands became ill and four deaths were attributed to this incident.
But are we throwing the baby out with the bath water?
On the surface, it seems as if no one knew this would be a problem. But it’s hard to tell without reading the report.
Did anyone raise this before the event? If so, why wasn’t a work-around adopted before disaster struck? And, if not, why wasn’t anyone thinking about the potential impact on potable water needing to be delivered in a crisis? This should bother everyone – the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
Precious time is lost when those engaged in an emergency response have to confront problems like this. I don’t think anyone could say these were unintended consequences because the level of regulatory oversight was deliberately broad.
I cannot for the life of me understand how this could occur.
I have written about the large number of reviews conducted after Cyclone Gabrielle and the gaps that seem obvious in retrospect.
As I have said, there is a risk associated with undertaking siloed reviews when joint reviews could highlight how agencies have (or have not) operated together.
The potential for a constraint on the army being able to deliver potable water was not obvious to me, but it should have been obvious to the regulator and to those leading the response.
It does raise the matter of whether this is a case of regulatory overreach – the rules are the rules.
It was the week before the election, when I woke to the sound of the relatively new head of regulatory services at Taumata Arowai expressing his dissatisfaction with the councils that had not introduced protozoa barriers.
My interest was piqued as he had included Christchurch in his list of councils. I remain passionately interested in our city’s drinking water drawn as it is from our pristine aquifers. The requirement for this water to continue to be chlorinated still rankles given the work done on our drinking water infrastructure after the Havelock North inquiry.
However, this story was not about chlorine. It was a response to the cryptosporidium outbreak in Queenstown, which had led Taumata Arowai to write to all councils that “share the same characteristics” as the Queenstown supply about protozoa barriers that filter out or ‘zap’ the bugs in the source water.
But Christchurch isn’t the same as Queenstown.
The source of Christchurch’s water comes from its deep and abundant aquifers, not from surface water. And councils that draw their water from deep secure aquifers are not required to have a protozoa barrier as long as they have a sanitary bore head and three years of testing to back up the absence of bacteria.
This exception wasn’t mentioned in any of the interviews.
I have often wondered if the story would not have sounded so alarming if the numbers were limited to those water sources that were genuinely comparable to Queenstown. It was highlighted in several stories that Christchurch supplies alone serve more than 168,000 people and yet this wasn’t about us.
I know this led me at the time to question the council about the advice Taumata Arowai had provided them that resulted in the closing down of the popular chlorine-free taps at Rawhiti and Burnside. They couldn’t provide me with an answer at the time. It must be time to ask again, because if the aquifer depth is right and the wellhead is secure, then that should be that. But it appears not.
Learning about what the army have been forced to confront after the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, it’s important we can see exactly what requirements Taumata Arowai would impose on them to supply potable water and whether these really stack up.
I have a suspicion the one-size-fits-all rule will be found wanting.
The Act is a nightmare. Its clearly written with Councils in mind but the ramifications are far reaching. I supplied a neighbour with a pan of water when the mains were shut off by our council to fix a leak (a regular occurrence in the Hutt). I was clearly in breach of the Act (section 34b)” A person who supplies drinking water on an unplanned basis must—
(a) comply with sections 21 and 22, as far as is reasonably practicable; and
(b) notify Taumata Arowai immediately of the temporary drinking water supply arrangement and comply with any directions issued by a compliance officer under section 104.”
This is just a vivid example of the patent stupidity of our over- regulated little country.
Maybe people are starting to see that most of the problems with drinking water in NZ are artefacts of our regulatory system that has been captured by vested interests for the sole purpose of fattening the cash flow. A Lianne points out – nothing wrong with Christchurch’s bore field water supply other than that it does not meet the ridiculous drinking water regulations.
The idiot regulators trot out the bit about the Queenstown cryptosporidium outbreak – when there is not a shred of evidence that the QLDC water supply had even a remote connection to it – indeed the epidemiology of that outbreak had the “finger prints” of a food hygiene related source all over it – as do most of our cryptosporidium outbreaks.
We are drowning in a sea of stupid regulations – this week Im getting my driveway sealed (because council require it) the road is 30Km/hr zone with maybe a dozen vehicles an hour on it, it is a 3 metre seal surface road with 6m grass berms either side of it. No of the work will require disruption of the flow of traffic but we require a couple of hundred road cones, a stop go person, and because the “traffic management” zone is less than 100m from a railway crossing – even though that is controlled by a stop sign not lights – permission for the traffic management plan has to be obtains from Kiwrail – a process that takes 30 days.
Recently I was awoken at 4 in the morning in my newly built home by my smoke alarm advising me that carbon monoxide was present within the house at more than 100ppm. It turns out that new homes are so airtight that the only pathway for air to enter the house if a vent is running is through the wood burner chimney – now the house is required to have a vent in the laundry, the bathrooms and the kitchen – but no inlet for fresh air – and in this situation I had inadvertently left the heat transfer system running but lad a window slightly open at one end of the house but had left the intervening doors shut so a low pressure zone was created in the room with the wood burner in it as the fire died down the venting effect of the heat transfer system started drawing air down through the chimney filling the house full of carbon monoxide and fine combustion particulates. I have contacted everyone from BRANZ to MBIE and the fireplace manufacturer and got no sensible response from any of them. This is a really hazardous situation that exists in all new homes that have wood stoves in them that do not have a dedicated external air supply (ie most wood burners). Any time a vent is tuned on in any modern home wiht a wood burner in it the primary pathway for air to enter the house will be down the chimney – that cant be healthy, and if the fire is dying out, positively dangerous
The building regulations have been changed since my house was built last year requiring triple glazing and 150mm thick insulation adding 15% to the cost of building new home – the house already is comfortably warm and cheap to heat – so like the drinking water regulations and traffic ,management regulations and a whole raft of other regulations that only seem to be intended to “fatten the pig” for those administering them wealthier – a complete waste of money and a complete lack of commonsense or practicality.
When a state of emergency is in place, such as in response to earthquakes, cyclones, or floods, emergency action takes precedence. The welfare of the community requires that.
The Mayor, surely, can decide the common sense solution. The available water in Hawkes Bay at the time was affected by a flood of silt, so the most practical solution needed to be found. The Mayor and the defence force can over-ride regulations to do the right thing. There are more important matters for the defence force to attend to in an emergency than comply with regulations which were designed for normal conditions