SVIS Messages

5 December 2019 - 11.00 am

Please be aware that we will be having two unplanned shutdowns this afternoon between 1200 and 1700 hours. The affected areas will be as follows:

Paynters Road, Bests Road, Ben Morven Road, Morven Lane and Corletts Road.
Wrekin Road.

Thank you for your patience.

3 December 2019 -9.17 am

Potential 2 - 3 day full system shutdown

Due to a leak in the main Hawkesbury Road pipeline we may need to shut the Hammond Road supplied system down for 2 - 3 days fro midweek. We are going to expose the leak to make an assessment and once we have more information will make a decision. However if you need to, please use the system in the next two days to meet your requirements. We hope to have more information later Tuesday or early Wednesday. Will keep you posted.

This does not affect the Fareham Lane supplied portion.

21 November 2019 - 2.27 pm

Fareham Lane and Guernsey Road shutdown

Fareham Lane and Guernsey Road are to be shutdown for an hour to enable repair of a leak, starting in the next 30 minutes. Supply will be restored without further notification.

20 November 2019 - 3.48 pm

Unplanned outage

We have had an unplanned power outage at Hammond Road pump station which has affected the whole system. We are working on getting the system up and running again as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

15 November 2019 - 4.00 pm

Brookby Road - irrigation supply unplanned outage

Water in Brookby Road south of Falveys Road including Barracks Road will remain off until at least Monday. Materials are yet to arrive to enable the repair of the watermain.

5 November 2019 - 4.35 pm

All of SVIS is on Summer mode

The system was switched to summer mode on Saturday (2 November). However some of the booster pumps are struggling to remain running due to low flows, especially Brancott Road. This will cause short term outages beyond those boosters until demand increases. Fareham Lane and Guernsey Road will be started today.

11 October 2019 - 1.50 pm

Southern Valleys Irrigation scheme is primed and now in operation on Winter mode.

This notification applies to all of the scheme except Fareham and Guernsey Lanes.

7 May 2019 - 10.00 am

The volume of water being used has fallen significantly since the end of harvest. We are planning to shut the system down for the winter at the end of this week. If you need water for irrigation purposes ring us to discuss how we might achieve this. If we have no responses the system will be shut off on Friday.

25 March 2019 - 7.16 am

Yesterday average river flow was 6.7 m3/s. The scheme will be shutdown this morning.

13 March 2019 - 2.57 pm

SVIS is now back online - again

Irrigation supply information

The river flow average yesterday was just over 8.0 m3/s and is likely to stay up due to overnight rain. We have managed to get it running again this morning. So water is available to all with the exception of Brookby Rd. A leak in Brookby Rd means it will operate at low pressure until the leak can be repaired.

11 March 2019 - 7.13 am

We have got the system up and running. It may not be on for long, use it while its on. The river average yesterday was only 11 m3/s. Today's average is likely to be below the cut off level unless Trustpower generate. If it drops below 8 we will have to shut off again. Make the most of it.

27 February 2019 - 9.14 am

The average flow in the Wairau yesterday was 8.1 m3/s. This was due to Trustpower generating for 9 hours on Monday releasing about 12 m3/s. On Tuesday they generated for 3 hours at 11 m3/s. As a result today's average will fall back below 8.0 m3/s. Because it will take a minimum of 2 to 2.5 days to get SVIS primed and operating there will not be enough flow over the next few days to complete this. We are therefore not going to begin the start-up process today.

25 February 2019 -9.07 am

While the rain over the weekend was some relief to the dry weather it is not going to make much difference to the Wairau River flow. It has gone from 4.5 m3/s to 7.5 m3/s at 7:00 am this morning. We do not anticipate the average flow for today exceeding 8.0 m3/s. We will therefore not be able to start SVIS.

1 February 2019 4.44 pm

Based on today's flow in the Wairau River we are almost certainly going to be shutting SVIS down on Saturday morning. We will send out an alert tomorrow morning to confirm.

1 February 2019 - 8.00 am

The average flow in the Wairau yesterday was 8.4 m3/s so we are able to continue running SVIS for a bit longer. If Trustpower generates again today we might be able to continue again on Saturday. But we expect to have to shut off on either Sunday or Monday. Once it is off this time its unlikely to be started again unless there is rainfall leading to higher flows in the river.

31 January 2019 - 7.18 am

Yesterday's average river flow was 9.7 m3/s. The river flow is being heavily influenced by Trustpower's generation at Lake Argyle. We expect to be able to continue to provide water up until at least Saturday morning and maybe Sunday but this is dependent on Trustpower. They did not generate last weekend. No power generation = low river flows which means SVIS being switched off.

http://hydro.marlborough.govt.nz/environmental

29 January 2019 - 8.13 am

Due to low Wairau River flows SVIS is being shutdown. It will be off in the next few minutes. I would expect people may ask when will it be back on. This will be subject to rainfall increasing the flows in the river. The long range forecast doesn’t look promising so river recovery might be a while off.

Update 28 January 2019

Yesterday's average Wairau River flow was 8.3 m3/s. SVIS will be shutdown this week when the average flow drops below 8.0m3/s. This might be as early as tomorrow. We will keep customers up to date with further alerts on the Antenno app. Customers can also view river flow information by looking at environmental data on Council’s website http://hydro.marlborough.govt.nz/environmental.

Update 22 January 2019

Wairau River flows are getting low. After manual checking yesterday, the river flow is actually reading only 13.5 cumecs (m3/second), rather than the 20 cumecs it appeared to be before.

What does this mean for Southern Valleys’ water users? At the current rate of depletion and without rainfall the scheme is likely to have to be shut down in two weeks’ time. The resource consent to take water from the Wairau River requires us to close the SVIS intake if the daily average flow drops below 8 cumecs. Once shut down, no water is available until river levels return to flows above 8 cumecs.

The figures have been re-calibrated on the flow charts on this website. This changes the historical data so that the recent, true flow level can be seen.

We will keep customers up to date with further alerts on the Antenno app.