A boil water notice has been issued for several eastern Christchurch suburbs after routine water sampling detected bacteria in the supply.

Christchurch City Council Head of Three Waters Gavin Hutchinson told chrislynchmedia.com, “There’s a number of suburbs affected which include New Brighton, Bexley, Wainoni, Aranui and Southshore, and on our website there is a map that provides the exact locations.”

“A result from routine water sampling was taken yesterday and those results came through this morning showing that there was a positive bacteria count in one of the samples taken,” Hutchinson said.

“We take tens of thousands of samples every year. It’s very, very unusual,” he said.

Hutchinson said the sample was taken in the eastern city water supply zone.

“Because we were shown that there was a positive count of bacteria, that’s enough for us to switch to a boil water notice. We obviously don’t take a risk,” he said.

He said residents must boil water used for consumption.

“Anything, any drinking water, brushing your teeth, the water should be boiled,” he said.

Further testing is now under way.

“It’ll be until further notice. We’re doing more sampling to get an understanding of the scale of the contamination,” Hutchinson said.

He said multiple sites were tested, with only one returning a positive result.

“It’s only one location point. So obviously we’re hoping that it won’t be further spread, but like I said, the round of sampling done yesterday there was quite a few sites taken and one came back positive.”

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