Iain Maxwell
WHEN it comes to Hawke's Bay's major water source - the Heretaunga Plains aquifer system - the numbers are massive.
The constantly renewing underground supply that sustains much of the region's production and flows out of taps across Napier and Hastings comprises about a trillion (a thousand billion) litres of water.
Of that 13-digit number, about 150 billion litres a year - 15 per cent - is "allocated" to be used by 1687 consent holders who have permission to take water from bores and streams connected to the network.
Half the allocated volume (74.8 million litres) subject to resource consents issued and monitored by Hawke's Bay Regional Council is used for irrigating crops and farms. Just over a third (51.5 billion litres) is "potable" (drinkable) water used predominantly for the municipal supplies that flow into our homes.
The other major use is by industry (21.8 billion litres).
The potable allocation includes seven consents totalling 3 billion litres, or 2 per cent of the total allocated volume, granted to water bottlers.
But it is those seven consents which have raised alarm recently.
Iwi groups have called for a moratorium on future bottling consents until it can be proven they are not having a detrimental impact on the aquifer and growers say better use could be made of the resource.
While the consents allowing for the 3 billion litres of drinking water to be extracted have been issued, the supplies are not yet being taken.
Construction is under way to convert an Awatoto industrial building into a bottling plant on a site where the owners have permission to take just over 400 million litres a year while a planned Hastings operation has consent to take up to 500 million litres a year from July, increasing to 900 million litres a year from 2017.
The imminent arrival of a major water bottling and export industry has some regional councillors rattled.
"The politics of this are impossible to manage because the public sees growers not being able to access water to keep trees alive and on the other hand they see us giving this allocation of water for bottling and sending off to China," councillor Peter Beaven said earlier this month.
"That doesn't make any logical sense at all."
Responding to Mr Beaven, the council's resource management group manager, Iain Maxwell, told a council meeting water takes were granted under the Resource Management Act which was an "effects-based" law and did not allow for "picking winners" in terms of how resources were allocated.
"It works on the premise that activities are generally okay unless they are specifically identified as being prohibited - as long as effects are managed," Mr Maxwell said.
A spokesman for Twyford fruit growers, Jerf van Beek, described the allocations to bottlers as "crazy," and said local water should be used as a resource to boost the regional economy.
"Talking as a grower, it's so important we have the water that we need rather than putting it in plastic bottles and shipping it to China or wherever it goes," he said.
"We can actually add value for the community by providing jobs, producing export crops that will actually bring back real money for our community."
Mr Maxwell told Hawke's Bay Today that while the council couldn't restrict takes based on economic arguments, there were a number of environmental boxes that had to be ticked before a consent was granted.
The applicant had to show, and the council had to be convinced, that what it was proposing wouldn't affect neighbour's access to water supplies, or cause other harm, such as leading to sea-water intrusion into the aquifer, where bores were drilled close to shore.
"What we know is that our monitoring bores along the coast tell us there is no intrusion of water from the coast, so that's good, that's a tick. And from the work that these applicants did with the bottled water we know there is no effect on neighbouring bores, so that's a tick as well."
Mr Maxwell said while the "philosophical" issue of whether extracted water should be bottled and exported couldn't be considered under the current regulatory framework, that may change under a review currently being worked on.
A multi-catchment look at how water and land issues are managed across the Tutaekuri, Ahuriri, Ngaruroro and Karamu (Tank) catchments is under way and is expected to result in a change to the regional resource management plan, probably in late 2017.
The plan change could introduce a regime where different water use activities are prioritised, a move that would be welcomed by Mr van Beek.
"We may be a little late, but we're now starting to put a value on what water actually means for us in the community and how we want to protect it in the community for our future," he said.