Southland's sustained drought has placed severe pressure on the province's water infrastructure.

Mossburn was the first to feel its full brunt on Sunday (3 April), when one of the town's two bores dried up, leaving the other struggling to cope.

This prompted an urgent plea to the town's residents to limit their water usage to essential use only.

SDC water operations manager Joe Findley said Mossburn residents responded, dropping their water consumption from 4 litres per second (l/s) to just 2.6 l/s.

This had allowed the town's reservoir to recover, lifting levels from just 40% on Sunday, to 70% by Tuesday morning (5 April), he said.

Findley said they were working on options to replenish the town's bores including pumping from an old bore that was closer to the town's adjacent Oreti River.

While water resources in the district's other towns appeared to be holding, Findley said they were continuing to monitor the health of the sources.

Riverton and Ohai/Nightcaps were, however, still at a critical (but stable) monitoring point, he said, while significant work had been undertaken at Te Anau's "The Homestead" rural stock water system when one of its bores went dry.

And SDC contractor, Downer, were in constant communication with the district's fire brigades, he said.

Findley said contingency planning was also being done, just in case a town completely ran out of water.

Should that happen there would be an immediate response, he said, with tankers to supply water for drinking and cooking. It may also require portable toilets to be placed in the town.

Findley said, "Any rain would help but it would require significant rainfall to recharge some of the aquifers. Some widespread rainfall would also slow consumption a wee bit too."

Gore District Council's (GDC) Three Waters asset manager Matt Bayliss said both Gore and Mataura were now pumping water from the Mataura River.

"We are taking water directly from the Mataura River and recharging one of our bores in Gore."

"And we are taking water directly from the Mataura River for Mataura as well, he said.

Bayliss said with level 2 restrictions in place throughout the Gore district, he was reasonably comfortable they were meeting the demand at this stage.

"We’ve got sufficient water to supply [water tankers] at this stage."

"And obviously if rural people are out of water then they need water, we’ll try and supply them for as long as we can," he said.

GDC's other towns, Waikaka and Pukerau, were supplied by the Clutha District Council's Glenkenich scheme, Bayliss said, while Mandeville didn't have a reticulated water supply.

Invercargill City Council (ICC) Three Waters Strategic Advisory Alister Murray said in a statement that the city had been able to maintain full or near full levels at its reservoir and they had not yet contemplated limiting supply to water carriers.

However ICC were investigating alternate supply sources, from its current Branxholme site on the Oreti River, as part of its long term strategy, the statement said.

Southland remains under a Water Shortage Direction banning all irrigation (except for the Mataura catchment) and non essential household and domestic activities. This will be reviewed again on 14 April.