E hia ngā wai o Tauranga?

To understand how much water is available there are three live measurements we use. The residual flow of the streams - our water supply, the production capacity of our water treatment plants, and the city's daily water consumption.

Of those three measurements there’s only one that we have full control over - that’s the daily water consumption, and that’s the bit we can all help with. If we can each stay under 200 litres per person per day this summer, there should be plenty to go round.

Our water sources

Tauranga’s drinking water comes from three aquifer-fed streams – the Tautau, Waiorohi and the Waiāri. When stream flow levels are low, we’re restricted as to how much water we can take. The percentage shows the current stream-flow compared to the 10-year average.

Water production levels

Three water treatment plants produce our city’s drinking water. We restrict water use when we’re close to our water treatment plants’ production capacity. We do this to ensure our treatment plants aren’t running at 100 per cent as this puts pressure on our resources and the plants. Find out how our water is treated.

Our daily usage

Water plays an important role in our daily lives, so we need to work together to conserve it. Rather than our water use peaking over summer, we want to try keep water use consistent throughout the year. Our Water Watchers Plan helps enable this.

Tauranga City's water use graph

Tauranga's 7-day average water use sits around 43.7 million litres of water per day and in previous summers has climbed to 58 million litres per day. After four dry summers in a row, the streams that supply the city with water remain lower than average. This means water use higher than 50 million litres per day will be unsustainable this summer.

Water use in this graph is reflected as a 'rolling' measure. This means daily numbers are expressed as a rolling average over 7 days - smoothing incidental peaks and highlighting trends instead of isolated extremes.

Water demand drivers graph