Havelock North is a small town with a population of about 11,000 people, in Hawkes Bay. It is only a ten-minute drive from Hastings.
In the last two or three days, many children, teenagers and elderly people have become sick and it is probably because of contaminated water. The symptoms are vomiting, diarrhoea, headache, and fever. One rest home which cares for elderly patients had 8 people with these symptoms and one person died, although it is not yet known if the drinking water was the cause of death. Many people have been admitted to hospital. The local high school had 170 out of 900 students absent on Thursday and Friday with a stomach illness. As well as the local state schools, there are three private boarding schools in Havelock North.
Water for Havelock North and Hastings comes from the ground. It is pumped up into reservoirs. Ground water is usually safe for drinking and does not need chlorine. However, the council decided to treat the water with chlorine in the meantime until they find out the source of contamination. People are advised to boil the water for 1 minute.
The Hastings District Council website has a very clear diagram showing how water from rain, hail or snow falls on the ground and is then filtered by river gravel in the ground.
Vocabulary
• contaminated (adj), contamination (n) – poisoned
• symptoms (n) – signs of an illness
• diarrhoea (n) – frequent, watery bowel movements
• admitted (passive v) to hospital – put in hospital but we say ‘enrolled in school’
• reservoirs (n) – water storage places
• chlorine (n) – Cl, used to make water clean and safe
• source (n) – the cause of the problem
• filtered (v) – made clean through a filter process