Lake Hayes Estate water conservation requested

A sudden increase in water demand on the Lake Hayes Estate water supply has resulted in the Queenstown Lakes District Council calling on residents to help conserve water,” QLDC 3 waters operations engineer Martin Ellis said.

“In the early hours of yesterday (Tuesday) the council received notice that the water reservoir level was approaching low levels,” Mr Ellis said.

The council would have no option but to impose a water ban on the supply if levels continued drop towards required fire fighting capacity levels.

“There is obviously a clear correlation between the extremely hot temperatures and the high water use,” Mr Ellis said.

With the severe drop in level happening over night, when water use should be minimal, Mr Ellis said the most obvious cause was likely to be overnight irrigating.

“We would ask that people restrict irrigating to ‘hand held’ watering and water between the hours of 7pm and 7am but not leave taps running overnight,” he said.

Irrigation via a single standard hose connection (half inch hose) to a portable sprinkler or equivalent domestic fixed irrigation system (single hose capacity only) was fine for short periods but the use of a commercial k-line system or any other high capacity sprinkler would place too much pressure on the system.

“Once again the council intends to continue to work with high end users to ensure this does not impose an unreasonable burden on all other Lake Hayes users, particularly at this time of year,” Mr Ellis said.

The council would closely monitor water use.

“We need people on the Lake Hayes Scheme to continue to conserve water where possible and if that can be successfully done then hopefully we will not find ourselves in the position of implementing a water ban,” Mr Ellis said.

A more detailed letter outlining the situation would be sent to residents today.