Drinking Water for New Zealand

Managed by ESR for the Ministry of Health. Data extracted from the National WINZ Database.

WINZ Item: 1031

Status: Current

Written: 22 April 2008

Which Drinking-Water Standard Should Be Used?

There are currently two Drinking-Water Standards for New Zealand that have been released by the Ministry of Health in the last few years:

DWSNZ 2000 was released in 2000 and is currently the only one available in WINZ (version 5.2)
DWSNZ 2005 was released in late 2005.

While originally the DWSNZ 2005 was to become the sole standard from 1 January 2006, our understanding is that currently either standard is acceptable, and this situation will remain until a new statement is made by the Ministry.

WINZ 5.3, which was released in July 2007, accordingly gives suppliers the option of using the 2000 or 2005 standard for assessing compliance for individual supplies.