Saving water? But there's a flood!

We watched a news video about all the rain and flooding Auckland have had over the last week. It was amazing to see the huge amount of water that flooded houses, shops and cars.

The heavy rain washed a lot of dirt from the soil into the water and the muddy water ended up in the dams where the water that comes out of our taps comes from. The dirt in the water is called silt.


The silt in the water is a problem, because the water treatment plants, which clean our water and make it safe to drink are struggling to clean all of the dirt out of the water. All the people in Auckland have been asked to save 20 litres each a day. If we don't, we might have to boil our water before we can drink it. This would mean we can't use the water from our school drinking fountains.

We wrote about what we could do to save water. Here are some of our ideas.

 Our dams are filled with silt and it is yuck. We need to save water. We can save water by having a shorter shower.

 Elisha

There is mud in the water. We need to save water. I will check the taps are off.

 Sophie

How to save water

It is good to save water so we don’t have to boil it. Water is important because we need to drink water. We can have shorter showers to save water.  If there is a flood we could have to drink yucky water unless we save water.

 Mustafa

We can save water by having short showers and not leaving the tap running, because when there is a flood the dams are dirty.

 Ivan

The water in the dams is muddy so we need to save water.

 Seth

We have a lot of silt in our water, so we need to save water.  Have a small bath or short shower.

 Stephanie

We made signs to put by the sinks in the school toilets to remind people to turn off the taps.