Maintenance at Methven’s new drinking water facility allowed Council to test the capacity of the plant to service the town with treated water from just one reservoir, and it came up trumps.

The $10 million plant has two reservoirs, each capable of holding about 560 cubic metres of water and one was taken offline for maintenance last month.

Group Manager of Infrastructure and Open Spaces Neil McCann said operating with just one reservoir had resulted in little impact for the community.

“We did ask residents not to do any hosing during the maintenance period and we kept a close eye on water use, so it is good to be able to report that the water storage capacity with one reservoir worked well. There was some concern from the community when we were designing the new plant that the capacity of the two reservoirs could have been larger, but it has proven to be more than adequate.

“I want to thank all those on the Methven and Methven Springfield supply who didn’t do any hosing during the maintenance period, as that eased demand and meant we didn’t have to introduce further restrictions.”

Mr McCann said maintenance was an important part of keeping the water treatment plant running smoothly.

“We opened this membrane plant in October 2023 and the new membrane filtration technology means Methven is no longer subject to boil water notices after big rain events. The same technology is in use at Mount Somers and both plants are working as expected.”

The elaborate membrane filters remove 99.9 per cent of micro-sized contaminants. Water is also disinfected with UV light and chlorine and distributed via water supply pipe networks.

Council is on track to upgrade all its other water treatment plants by the end of the year. New drinking water quality assurance rules require the plants to have UV and cartridge filtration, and meeting the new rules means building or extending existing facilities to house the equipment.

Mr McCann said some of upgraded plants were being commissioned in the next month, some were just getting under way and others were timed to start later in the year but be complete by December.