Expansion plans for Bay of Plenty water bottling plant

A water bottling plant is seeking to expand its operations in Otakiri, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Photo/Getty

A water bottling plant has applied to take up to 5000 cubic metres groundwater a day from an existing bore in Otakiri, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty

Creswell NZ Limited has applied for resource consent from the Bay of Plenty Regional Council to take and use groundwater for water bottling purposes, undertake earthworks associated with the expansion of the existing water bottling plant, discharge stormwater and treated process water to water, and discharge treated wastewater effluent to land.

It wants to take a maximum volume of 5000 cubic metres per day of groundwater from an existing bore on the property and a new bore recently drilled for water bottling.

There is an existing resource consent which authorises the consent holder to take 158m3/day of groundwater at a rate of 2.74 litres per second (l/s) for irrigation purposes, 1,580m3/day of groundwater at a rate of 44l/s for frost protection purposes and 1,200m3/day of groundwater at a rate of 13.9l/s for water bottling purposes.

An expansion/redevelopment of the current water bottling facility known as Otakiri Springs is also proposed and the company is seeking consent for earthworks.

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council announced it will publicly notify the resource consent application made by Creswell New Zealand.

Owned by Nongfu Spring Co Limited, Creswell lodged their consent applications on 4 August 2017.

Consents manager for regional council, Reuben Fraser, said the application was processed like any other under criteria set out in the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA).

"The RMA sets clear guidelines around when consent applications must, and must not, be notified. In this case, we had discretion and have opted to notify on the basis that we will likely be able to make a more informed decision following a public process," Mr Fraser said.

"There are several stages to the resource consent process and we are now part way through. Submissions will be accepted from today until 5pm Monday, February 5. Following the submission period we will look at the next steps which will likely include appointing commissioners and holding a hearing," he says.

"This is not a quick process and we are a while off confirming whether consent will be granted," he says.

Details about notified consent applications and how to make a submission are available at www.boprc.govt.nz/resourceconsents and information about how water is allocated is available at www.boprc.govt.nz/wateruse

Under current legislation, the regional council do not have the ability to charge for water.