Ohakune residents still boiling drinking water as town enters 'recovery mode'

A precautionary boil water notice remains in effect in Ohakune until testing confirms the water is safe.

Ruapehu District Council says every property connected to its network should now have water after five days of disruption.

A break in the pipeline taking water to the town's only water supply completely drained the reservoir at the weekend, but the council's civil defence team says the system is now stable and the response will move into recovery mode.

Schools and businesses were closed during the emergency, and water tankers, bottled water and portaloos had to be brought in.

Civil defence controller Vini Dutra said three consecutive days of clear test results are required before the boil water notice can be lifted.

Until then, people should continue boiling water for at least two minutes before drinking it or using it for food preparation.

A water tanker will continue to be made available outside the council's office until the notice is lifted.

Dutra said restarting the Water Treatment Plant and restoring the water supply had gone well, with no significant issues since supply was restored on Tuesday evening.

On Thursday, water on Miro Street between Conway and Wye Streets needed to be shut down for around five hours to repair a leak.

"We have experienced a handful of leaks on the network as it was repressurised," Dutra said.

"Repairing these will require isolated spot shutdowns to the affected parts of the network."

The council was scheduling this work to minimise disruption, Dutra said.

All public toilets were expected to reopen on Thursday, allowing the removal of the emergency port-a-loos.

Dutra said the outage highlighted the importance of every household having an emergency plan and being prepared to manage without outside assistance for at least three days.

"Households should store at least three litres of water per person per day for drinking and basic hygiene.

"We encourage people to keep and reuse the large plastic water containers distributed during the outage as a starting point for their household emergency supplies."

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air