While there are no water restrictions currently in place for the Whakatane District, people are being warned they may need to conserve water if the fine weather continues.

Whakatane District Council public affairs manager Ross Boreham says if the current fine weather develops into a full drought, the council may need to encourage voluntary conservation measure in the next month to six weeks.

There are currently no water restrictions in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.

He says if this happens, messages will be issued to the community to let people know of the situation.

'It's normally later in the summer before we run into any significant issues.

'Water restrictions here are driven by salinity traveling upriver on high tides when the river flow is low. At this stage the river flow is still reasonably good, so the issue hasn't arisen,” says Ross.

To help overcome that issue, the council have extended their emergency intake a further 500 metres upriver, 'so when necessary, we can extract water from the river one kilometre upstream from our treatment plant”.