A broken pipe caused a water outage in Waihi on Wednesday morning.
"Waihi is now out of water," the Hauraki District Council wrote on its Facebook page, informing residents that bottles of water would be distributed around town.
The news came as many parts of the country face drought and severely dry conditions.
Earlier on Wednesday, the council said the situation was "critical" with reservoir levels extremely low. Residents were urged not to shower or wash clothes.
Mayor Toby Adams told Newshub the outage was caused after the main water pipe to the town's reservoir broke last night.
"They've worked through the night to repair that, but during that time obviously water was still getting used so our reservoir was running low," Adams said. "And when they were still repairing and testing this morning we ran out of water."
The pipe has now been repaired and the reservoir is slowly filling up again.
Adams said such breakages were not uncommon during hot weather.
"It could be due to all sorts of things, the ground is pretty dry and this happens a bit in dry weather - the ground moves and shifts about and pipes just break."
It is expected the reservoir will take a few days to fill up.
While that happens the council is urging people to conserve water.
"To enable the reservoir to recover we need as little as possible taken out of home supplies. Please avoid flushing toilets. Only use your taps for necessary drinking water or preferable collect bottled water from our water stations."
Residents are also advised to boil any tap water before drinking it.
Free bottled water is available from the Golden Legacy Centre on Moresby Ave, Morgan Park, and the Salvation Army, the council said.
Adams said that although the reservoir was being refilled, dry conditions mean the town's water concerns are not over yet.
"We're like some other councils in the country experiencing lower flows than normal in the rivers, so it is dry."
On Friday last week, the council issued a total watering ban in Waihi and Waikino.
