Roger Moroney: Time to keep an eye on our water

Roger Moroney

I think it is fair to say summer has arrived ... for now.

At least for another week, as the long-range forecast shows sunshine pretty well rules the roost right through until next Tuesday, when some rainy southeasterlies are predicted to pass through.

So yep, for now, it's pretty dry out there.

Dry enough to start wondering if the time will again come that water restrictions are introduced, as they have been in some gruelling dry summers passed.

They're already talking about water "issues" in Wellington, and it's only the first week of December.

I guess in our favour here is that we have a great big thing called an aquifer underneath us.

Which is kind of like a safety net given that many other regions have to draw their water from rivers and things, so when they get low the water take has to be reduced.

Our dear old aquifer has water seeping through it which began its journey to the sea about 20 years ago (a scientific chap once told me).

So it has a wonderful vintage ... or it does until it gets to the bores which bring it to the surface.

In wine terms, they have corked.

So hey, do what the wine industry did when corks began to fall foul too often?

Devise smart, new, light-alloy ones with top-notch seals.

Problem solved.

No way they would have added something to the wine to prevent pollution.

On the watery note, I doubt any drought-induced steps to reduce the use of water from our Hawke's Bay taps will be extreme, given that pretty well everyone I come across tells me they now don't use the tap to pour drinking water.

Instead they use the cap of a bottle purchased from the supermarket as it comes with a little note on the label which indicates it contains ... water.

Contains no dairy products, no traces of seafood, no salt and of course no chlorine.

The latter being the big one.

To me, this chlorine in the water issue is kind of like the reaction which rippled across the land after the terrible Christchurch earthquakes.

All of a sudden the engineering reports began emerging from one end of the land to the other and they were formed around the new guidelines thrown up by the big 'quakes and what they did.

Overnight, buildings were either vacated or targeted for extensive strengthening.

It's still happening today with the council buildings here in Napier of course, although I figured they'd got through the initial reports pretty well ... just the latest one has tripped things up, for some reason.

Put it this way.

Those buildings look fine to me and hey, we've had a few decent old shakes since they went up and hardly a crack in sight.

Mind you, I guess when it comes to dodgy items like E. coli, which caused extreme distress across Havelock North, you can't take chances.

So if you want chlorine-free Hawke's Bay water go to China...they've got mega-litres of it.

So anyway, we must begin thinking about our water because it comes from one place and that's the clouds in the sky and when they take a long summer holiday the levels fall.

This is a simplistic way of looking at a non-simplistic issue, of course, but I am a simple person.

I am also a person rather keen to investigate the fine old art of dowsing, or in other terms water-divining.

Once upon a time some of those who claimed to be able to hold a forked stick and use it to locate water deep beneath us were lined up and burned at the stake.

Others were lauded as saviours.

I remember my old mum mentioning this strange art which she came across back in the 30s.

Some old chap was renowned for "divining" water and apparently made a few pennies from it when the dry times struck.

Imagine being able to wander across dry and barren fields and with a forked stick locate a large and natural subterranean water tank.

One theory about how this can happen involves muscles in the arms reacting to some sort of electromagnetic effect caused by water reacting to rock and holding the forked stick amplifies this twitching of muscles.

Another is that microscopic corpuscles from minerals below rise and seep into the porous woods of the rods and they accordingly dip slightly.

And while it all sounds dodgy it needs to be noted that water-divining is still actually carried by farmers, even water engineers, in parts of England.

I could make a fortune, because you could point a forked stick at the ground anywhere from Tikokino to Eskdale and find water, thanks to the great safety net created by that wonderful company Aquifers R Us.

Or maybe a chlorine diviner?