Drinking water protection zones
Protecting sources of community drinking water is of paramount importance. Hazards that affect source water can contaminate the entire drinking water supply and cause illness to those who consume it. Community drinking water protection zones are implemented to safeguard against such risks.
What is a drinking water protection zone?
A community drinking water protection zone is a mapped area around a community drinking water supply.
Through rules in the Canterbury Land and Water Regional Plan (CLWRP), activities within community drinking water supply protection zones are more tightly regulated than activities outside these zones.
They are drawn around surface water sources (rivers and lakes) and groundwater sources (bores and springs).
The shape of them is determined by site-specific factors set out in Schedule 1 of the CLWRP.
Our database lists over 500 community drinking water supplies, and protection zones are mapped around them.
Public register of drinking water supplies
The CLWRP definition of a community drinking water supply requires the supply to be recorded on the national drinking water register maintained by the Water Services Regulator, Taumata Arowai.
Search and find the drinking water supplies in your local area in the public register.
Check if your property is in a drinking water protection zone
Community drinking water protection zones have been identified through collaboration between Environment Canterbury, water suppliers, territorial authorities, and public health agencies.
Use the map to search for your property and check whether it is located within a community drinking water protection zone.
Drinking water protection zone property search
What activities are restricted in a drinking water protection zone?
Community drinking water protection zones are based on the modelling of pathogens like E. coli bacteria.
Activities that are prohibited
Within drinking water protection zones, grazing of stock in river or lake beds, the use of land for community wastewater treatment and the discharge to land, and the discharge of municipal solid waste is strictly prohibited.
Additionally, many activities involving the potential discharge of nutrients or chemicals that would otherwise be considered permitted require resource consent to be undertaken wholly or partly within a protected zone.
Activities that require resource consent
The following activities may not be undertaken in a drinking water protection zone without resource consent:
Discharge of/from:
- animal effluent
- wastewater
- swimming pool/spa pool water
- pit toilet (long drop)
- composted sewage
- vertebrate toxic agent
- agrichemical
- solid animal waste/vegetative matter
- construction phase stormwater
- groundwater from dewatering
- drainage water from a drainage system into surface water, artificial watercourse, constructed wetland or into/onto land
- liquid waste or sludge waste from industrial process etc.
- stormwater to surface water or land where it could enter surface water
- water or contaminants to land where they could enter groundwater
- for the purposes of managed aquifer recharge
- water tracer
- passive discharge of contaminants that results in concentration of contaminants in groundwater.
Use of land for:
- effluent storage
- offal pit
- refuse pit
- silage pit
- storage and use of a hazardous substance in a portable container
- stockholding area
- a new cemetery or extension of an existing cemetery.
Need help with your next steps?
If you currently undertake, or are planning to undertake, any of the activities listed above within a drinking water protection zone, we can help you understand your options.