THE NZ WATER REPORT LIBRARY · OFFICIAL COUNCIL DATA
What's Actually in New Zealand's Tap Water, District by District.
Every council in New Zealand tests its water and reports the results to the regulator. Almost none of it is published where you can read it. So we asked for it - council by council, under official information law - and turned the spreadsheets into plain-English reports. Every number below traces to the council's own release.
THE DISTRICTS
Pick your council.
Each page holds the full release: the headline numbers, every zone, and what the testing never looked for. New districts are added as councils respond.
Hamilton
1,201 samples across 45 sites. The first council in the library to actually test for PFAS - none found - and a river arriving with arsenic above the limit that treatment brings down.
Kapiti Coast
Four supply zones. Trihalomethanes up to 173 times the international health guideline in Otaki, lead traces against a zero goal in three of four zones - all inside New Zealand's legal limits.
Waikato District
Thirteen zones from Huntly to Raglan. Twelve sit above at least one international health goal; Raglan is the one that doesn't.
Tauranga
A year of council testing: 874 chlorine samples, zero E. coli detections in 744 - and not one PFAS test in the whole year.
Rotorua
The urban supply plus the village schemes, zone by zone, from the council's own release.
Palmerston North
City and district schemes from the council's release, with the fluoride, chlorine and by-product numbers side by side.
Christchurch
All fourteen zones. Chlorine in every one of 3,267 samples - the unchlorinated era is over - no fluoride, and haloacetic acids over the NZ standard itself at Duvauchelle and Little River on Banks Peninsula.
Invercargill and Bluff
Zero E. coli and zero total coliforms in 477 samples for the whole year. Trihalomethanes inside the NZ limit and up to 248 times the international health guideline in Bluff.
Timaru
All twenty zones, 1,510 chlorine readings, zero E. coli in 956 samples. A lead trace in every zone, the Downlands zones highest for by-products, and one raw bore at three times the lead limit before treatment.
Matamata-Piako
The council's complete lab workbook, Matamata to Te Aroha. Zero E. coli in 254 samples, chlorine and a lead trace in every zone, and Morrinsville carrying the district's highest chlorination by-products.
Te Awamutu, Cambridge and Waitomo
Ten zones with enough to report, 1,855 chlorine samples, zero E. coli in 1,063. By-products hundreds of times above the EWG guidelines across Waipa, and no fluoride found in any Waipa zone.
Dargaville and Kaipara
Five zones, 778 chlorine readings, zero E. coli in 264 samples. By-products hundreds of times above the EWG guidelines in every zone, and a chlorate reading in Ruawai at 62% of the legal limit.
New Plymouth
All seven zones, Okato to Urenui, 1,225 chlorine readings. No lead anywhere, fluoride in the four city-supply zones, by-products above the EWG guideline in all seven - and a release with no zone E. coli results at all.
Masterton and Tinui
Fifteen months, 140 network E. coli samples with no detections, fluoride on the urban supply at 0.87 mg/L, no lead in the network, and trihalomethanes 81 times the EWG guideline at the January peak.
Horowhenua
Levin, Foxton, Foxton Beach, Shannon and Tokomaru, a full year: no E. coli in 330 network samples, fluoride in Levin only, and Foxton's trihalomethanes at 82% of the New Zealand limit.
Oamaru and Waitaki
Twenty-five zones, 3,309 chlorine readings, fluoride on the Oamaru supply, and a July 2026 metals round that read as a stagnant first draw at 16 taps - lead 23 times the limit at Palmerston, below detection on the council's resample two weeks later.
Paeroa, Waihi and the Hauraki Plains
Six zones from the council's own regulator compliance exports, released free after a charging letter: chlorine in every zone, lead never above 0.00155 mg/L, and no zone E. coli, pH or turbidity in the release at all.
Thames-Coromandel
Thames to Whangamata, fourteen months. No E. coli at any treated tap, a Thames supply listed as fluoridated but measuring 0.03 mg/L, and one untreated rural supply, Puriri, with E. coli in every sample and a lead result over the New Zealand limit.
Queenstown Lakes
Queenstown, Wanaka, Arrowtown and Lake Hawea: 991 chlorine readings and one by-product round, and nothing else yet - no bacteria, metals, pH, turbidity or fluoride in the release. The rest has been requested.
Auckland? The Watercare zones are built into the instant report - type your suburb. Wellington, Dunedin, Napier and Hastings are in progress from requests already lodged.
The whole library in one place: The State of New Zealand's Tap Water, 2026 - league tables for trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids, lead, fluoride and PFAS across all 100 supplies, the clean list, and how every council answered.
Not listed? Every supply in the country is on the regulator's own record: search the national extract - 397 supplies, 595 zones, and the register of notified exceedances, released by Taumata Arowai under the Official Information Act.
WHY THE TWO BARS
Your water is safe by every New Zealand rule. Both facts are true.
New Zealand sets legal limits for what can be in drinking water, and councils meet them. The Environmental Working Group publishes health-based guidelines that sit far below those limits, because "legal" and "what you'd choose for your family" are different questions. We show every reading against both, name the source of each, and say plainly when a council has never tested for something at all - PFAS and microplastics, in nearly every release so far. Then the decision is yours.