'Never had anything like it': The crisis that changed NZ, 10 years on

On August 12, 2016, thousands of Havelock North residents started to feel what they thought was a bad tummy bug.

By Linda Hall of Local Democracy Reporting

The symptoms were all there –diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, and painful stomach cramps.

Many of them did what you’re told to do as a young child when you’re sick – stay as hydrated as possible.

But in turning to their taps, the victims were unknowingly making themselves sicker with every sip.

Havelock North’s water supply had been contaminated with campylobacter after sheep faeces entered it through a bore on Brookvale Road following heavy rain.

By the time the crisis and Government inquiry was over, more than 5500 people had fallen ill, 45 people were hospitalised and four people had died of causes related to the outbreak.

An unknown number continue to suffer ongoing health complications to this day.

The event changed New Zealand’s view of the safety of aquifer-fed supplies and how water from them should be treated.

Hastings District Council chief infrastructure officer Craig Thew, who was at the council at the time, said that 10 years on, the focus remained on the people who became ill, those who experienced lasting health effects, and the wider impact on the community.

Thew said safe drinking water was an essential service a community must be able to rely on.

“Havelock North residents had every right to trust the public water supply was safe.

“In August 2016, that trust was broken.”

He said figures record the scale of the outbreak “but cannot fully describe its impact”.

“For some people, the immediate illness passed relatively quickly. For others, the effects were serious, and for some the impacts continued well beyond the outbreak,” Thew said.

He said the crisis was not experienced in the same way by everyone, and the anniversary would not feel the same to everyone.

“Some people may welcome the opportunity to ensure what happened is not forgotten.

“Others may find renewed attention difficult or prefer not to revisit that time.

“Those experiences belong to the people affected, and council acknowledges and respects the different ways the crisis continues to be remembered.”

Thew said at the time, the aquifer supplying Havelock North was considered secure so the water drawn from it was not treated and there was no residual chlorine requirement in the pipes.

But the government’s inquiry found serious shortcomings, including in risk management, water safety planning, record keeping and emergency preparedness.

“It found the organisations responsible for drinking-water safety had not applied the high level of care and diligence needed to protect public health,” Thew said.

Then mayor Lawrence Yule and council chief executive Ross McLeod made a public apology published in Hawke’s Bay Today on August 15, 2016.

They said the illness and disruption that had been inflicted on many Havelock North residents by the contamination of the water supply had been very serious.

“The council is charged with supplying you safe, reliable water. The council has failed to do this on this occasion. As mayor and chief executive, we offer our sincere apology for this.”

Thew said one of the clearest lessons for the council was that supplying safe drinking water could not be based on assumptions a water source was secure.

He said protecting public health required several layers, including understanding and managing risks to the source, effective treatment, reliable monitoring, skilled people, clear accountability and systems ready to respond quickly when something went wrong.

“The crisis also showed that supplying safe drinking water was not simply an engineering or infrastructure matter. It required a public-health approach, with water managed from its source through to the household tap.”

Thew said the response began immediately and developed into a much broader change in the way Hastings District Council managed drinking water.

“In 2017, first as acting mayor and then as mayor, Sandra Hazlehurst made it clear that delivering safe drinking water was council’s number one priority,” he said.

The council’s new drinking water strategy was developed from the scientific findings, the inquiry recommendations and the lessons from the outbreak.

Comprehensive treatment was introduced across all Hastings council supplies. Monitoring and operational controls were strengthened.

New treatment and storage facilities were developed, small community supplies were upgraded, and the Hastings and Havelock North networks were connected to improve safety and resilience.

The inquiry found wider problems in the national drinking-water system and called for major change, including mandatory treatment of networked supplies and the establishment of a dedicated drinking-water regulator.

The Water Services Authority, Taumata Arowai, was established and became the focused national drinking-water regulator in November 2021.

Its regulatory system now places greater emphasis on risk management, treatment, monitoring, accountability and multiple barriers to protect drinking-water supplies.

Hastings mayor Wendy Schollum said the events of 2016 reinforced her belief that good local government began with getting the basics right.

“Since then, council has made major changes to drinking-water treatment, monitoring, and infrastructure,” she said.

“But that responsibility does not end when an upgrade is completed. Providing safe drinking water and maintaining essential infrastructure requires constant attention, careful planning, and continued investment.”

Schollum said the lessons from Havelock North continued to guide council’s decisions.

Thew said the work done since 2016 did not change what happened.

“The best acknowledgment council can make is to remember the people affected, continue to own its responsibility, and ensure safe drinking water, public health and community trust remain at the centre of every decision,” he said.

Sipping a cup of coffee with a mate at a Havelock North cafe followed by a glass of water was a pleasant way to spend an hour on a Thursday morning for Simon Nixon.

But the Hastings District councillor didn’t have time to linger.

It was August 11, 2016, and nominations for the local body elections closed at noon.

He got that sorted and then went to Hawke’s Bay Today for an interview.

It was there just four or five hours after that water that he started to feel “a bit queasy”.

Ten years on, Nixon has both vivid and vague memories of the next four or five days.

“I began to feel worse in the afternoon and eventually took myself off to bed thinking I was coming down with the flu.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, ‘what the hell’s going on’?”

“It was just like all hell had broken loose. Dorothy, my wife, who was sleeping in another room and I can’t remember why, came in.

“The bed was a total mess. Dorothy ended up throwing everything out.”

He said he hadn’t had the flu very often in his life, but remembered thinking this was an awful dose of it.

“I’ve never had anything like it.”

It wasn’t until Saturday that he discovered the worst.

“It wasn’t something I had, but something we all had.”

It took him more than a week before he started to feel better.

Nixon, who has been retained as a councillor by voters in the decade since, said he feels the council reacted in the best way it could to ensure it didn’t happen again.

“We had a problem, and we knew we had to do something about it.”

– Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air