On Thursday the Hamilton City Council will decide whether or not to put fluoride back into the city’s water supply.

A report with options will be discussed at the full Council meeting on 28 November.

The options have been created based on things such as background, previous decisions, new information and legal issues.

The options are: (a) to keep the water supply fluoridated (b) to re-commence it or (c) to have the city’s main water supply fluoride-free and provide somewhere for people to get un-fluoridated water if they want it.

Option (c) has two possibilities – one would cost an estimated $200-300,000 and therefore this is not recommended by staff and the other would be one would cost approximately $10-15000 plus $3,000 ongoing operating costs. Options (a) and (b), and the latter of option (c), are therefore up for consideration, discussion and a decision, on Thursday.

The staff report covers the previous consultation and decision-making processes that the Council has been through. It is made clear in the report that if this [new] Council is going to overturn the decision of the previous Council, and put fluoride back into the water supply, they will need to be very clear about why they have made this decision. Whichever way the decision goes we will provide notice to interested parties and put this on our website after the meeting.

Note: this is a different Council of elected members from the one that made the decision to remove fluoride. However Councillors Martin Gallagher and Ewan Wilson (who previously declared a conflict of interest as they were DHB members) will still need to remove themselves from the discussion as they were also re-elected to the DHB and that conflict remains.

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