Rural Water Supplies

Council owns and manages 11 rural water supply schemes at Duncraigen, Five Rivers, Homestead, Eastern Bush-Otahu Flat, Kakapo, Lumsden-Balfour, Matuku, Mount York, Princhester, Ramparts and Takitimu.

Two of these - Eastern Bush-Otahu Flat and Lumsden-Balfour - are treated and can be used for drinking water for people. The rest of the rural schemes are used for stock.

Allocations

You can purchase units from Council, which gives you a daily allocation of water you can take from the scheme. This is controlled by a restrictor device at your tank.

A unit for all schemes except Lumsden-Balfour contains 1818.4 litres or 1.8 cubic metres or 400 UK gallons or 1.26 litres a minute. Lumsden Balfour units contain 2000 litres or 2 cubic metres or 440 UK gallons or 1.38 litres per minute.

All reticulation up to and including the ballcock at the tank is owned and maintained by Council. Maintenance of the tank and on-farm pipework is your responsibility.

It is illegal to connect to the rural water supply without permission or to tamper with any Council pipework.

Repairs and faults

Council relies on you to inform it about faults and problems. Because of the areas covered by the schemes and the pipework having been laid through paddocks, it takes longer to locate problems.

You need to have two days' storage of water on their property in case the scheme needs to be shut down for repairs.

If your water supply runs out, check if there is any water running into your tank and if the tank is empty before contacting Council. This helps the contractor when working out how to fix the problem.

Definitions

Toby: The toby, or stop cock, is a valve that turns the water supply on and off to your property. It is usually found close to the street.

Reticulation: Reticulation is the network of pipes that delivers water to your property. Another set of reticulation takes wastewater away from your property.

Ballcock: The shut-off valve at the top of the inlet on a consumer’s rural water tank.

Restrictor: A special device that restricts the flow rate of water to a pre-set amount (used on rural water supplies).

Hydrant: A special outlet on the water main used for fire-fighting (covered by a rectangular lid and painted yellow).

About this page

First added: 25 March 2009
Last updated: 11 January 2012

Who to contact

Click here for Requests for Service.

Or, If you would like to discuss a matter on this page, feel free to contact us:

Southland District Council
P.O. Box 903
Invercargill 9840
Phone: 0800 732 732
Fax: 0800 732 329
emailsdc@southlanddc.govt.nz