Aotearoa Water Action: Environment Canterbury’s ‘hands not tied’

Aotearoa Water Action is calling Environment Canterbury’s statement today incorrect. “It implies that the water bottling issue is ‘out of their hands’ and that they have to grant these consents. That’s not the case. The reality is they can do something about this issue under current regulations,” says Niki Gladding from AWA.

She says that s30 of the RMA explicitly allows ECan to make new rules to allocate water amongst competing activities, including the ability to prohibit new consents to bottle water.
“So, one of the very real issues here is that ECan is not doing all within its power to sustainably manage the allocation of water in line with the community values,” she says.

AWA is also calling the Council out on allegations of ‘scaremongering’. She says that some of the issues have been conflated in the water bottling debate, but the facts are Canterbury’s aquifers are, almost without exception, fully or over allocated and its shallower aquifers are becoming contaminated due to decades of poor regulation of farming practices.

Water bottling and local water restrictions are not related at this time, but in the future they may be because if the City Council (CCC) wants to take more water from Belfast bores it will have to prove it’s not impacting on Cloud Ocean’s bore. CCC will also have to prove it’s not adversely affecting the aquifer. In a growing city these things are real issues.

She says that ECan’s line has always been that it’s not its job to consider the purpose to which water is put but “That line doesn’t fly anymore because the inconvenient truth is that water in Christchurch is scarce and must be allocated to priority activities in line with community needs and values. That is sustainable management.”

But we agree with commentators that the Government needs to step in here. A new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management can and should direct all regional councils to prohibit new consents to bottle water. That’s the message we want our MPs to hear loud and clear this Saturday at the March to Save Our Water.

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