Waitangi Water Supply

The Memorial Park Alliance bore at Waitangi, Chatham Islands, was drilled by Webster Drilling in 2015 and later identified as the preferred source for an upgraded potable water supply to the Waitangi and Te One communities, with a design demand of 2.5 L/s.

After a 2019 test suggested that its sustainable yield had fallen to as little as 1 L/s, and with quotations for a replacement bore running well beyond the available funding, Webster Drilling was engaged to establish whether the condition of the bore, rather than the aquifer, was the real constraint.

Working with a single operator on the island, and with all plant sea-freighted from Wellington, the existing pump was removed, the screen inspected and chemically treated, and the bore redeveloped using compressed-air surging and airlift pumping. Step testing at 0.7, 1.3, 1.9 and 2.5 L/s returned a stable response across the full design range, while a 48-hour constant-rate test at 1.8–1.9 L/s resulted in less than one metre of drawdown.

These results confirmed that bore condition, rather than aquifer capacity, had limited the earlier results, delivering a proven water source for a fraction of the cost of a new bore.