Storing water - now would be a good time

The water that comes from your tap in Porirua has a remarkably long journey. It comes all the way from the Stuart Macaskill storage lakes at Te Marua, north of Upper Hutt, where the water was collected from the river. It's treated to make it clean and safe, and then heads down the valley (across the Wellington Fault in a couple of places) to a pumping station at Haywards, where it is pushed up and over the hill to flow on down to Porirua's reservoirs.

Currently, one of those storage lakes is completely empty. Greater Wellington is upgrading the sourthern lake this summer, to improve its strength in an earthquake, and also increase its capacity. The northern lake will be emptied and upgraded next summer. But in the meantime, it means that we have half the water stored in the system than we usually have.

This is likely to mean water restrictions as summer progresses, but it also means that now is a very good time to have more water stored in your own home for a unfortunate day when nothing comes out of the tap.

The warmer weather means that you'll probably be having lots of cold refreshing drinks - the kind that come in nice 1.5 or 3 litre clear plastic bottles - perfect for storing water! Instead of chucking the empty bottle in the recycling bin, clean it out, fill it to the top from the cold tap until it overflows, pop the lid on, and put it somewhere cool and dark out of your way. Tada! You've got some more water stored!

If the only refreshing drinks you have come in cans, glass, or milk bottles, then you can always buy some of our 10L water containers to store water in. They are just $5 each from the council office in Cobham Court.