Christine Scott
On Saturday a protest group arrived at my gate.
Standing in the rain chanting, "Elected to protect not wreck," and "Keep our water in the aquifer," they were protesting against the export of potable water.
I had my little 1-year-old grandniece with me, and happily clingy and glued to my hip she was going to stay. So, as it was raining, I was forced to remain under shelter.
Little Elise waved royally to them, and to their credit some waved back to her. While they'd rather chant than listen, and did upset the neighbours, they were a well-behaved protest group.
They later drove up and down the street in their cars, tooting horns, and although leaving their placards in the hedge with the paint running down on to the pavement and eventually into the estuary is hardly protecting rather than wrecking, I did have a certain sympathy for their cause.
The export of water from bottling, or wholesale containerisation of water up and down this country is going to increase. We are not the only region with new applications for potable water for export, nor the only region where at times, irrigation water is limited.
A new bottling plant in Nelson, exporting 1000 containers of water per year to China, and negotiating water to the Middle East, was set up by two redundant West Coast miners and hailed for its innovation at its opening in March this year. The previous month the Tasman District Council was granted consent for a 50m high dam for water storage to alleviate irrigation pressures.
Globally, bottled water is one of the least environmentally friendly uses for water.
Here in New Zealand, at least we have the RMA to protect our environment, and water can only be extracted if the activity can be conducted while, to quote the act, sustaining the potential of natural resources to meet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations. But there remains the problem of the amount of disposable plastic bottles produced and sent to landfill.
The facts are, with regard to all the water bottling applications here, that their effects are shown scientifically to be no more than minor, and therefore under the act there is no reason not to grant. These takes are from the confined aquifer. The takes do not affect neighbouring bores nor will they affect any streams or rivers. They will not affect the water available to orchardists or cause domestic water wells to run dry.
Keep the water in the aquifer, the protest demanded. That is not possible. The Heretaunga aquifer does not act like a bucket as the Ruataniwha does. It is a long, wide sloping underground waterway where the water eventually ends up in the sea.
While over thousands of years and floods across the plains, gravels that hold the water have been laid across the plains, so too have the clays and silts that form the aquitards that confine the aquifer. This forms a bit of a brick wall at the bottom of the aquifer, forcing much of the water back into rivers. But whether it seeps through into the ocean or resurfaces into the rivers, its ultimate journey end is the sea.
There remain two questions to be answered. The first is for the regional council. How much is too much? We know a lot about the Heretaunga aquifer -- but there is always more to discover.
What we are currently researching is a mathematical model that accounts for the state of the water in the aquifer and in all the rivers and streams and their interaction. What we are looking to achieve shortly is an overall water balance of surface and ground water. This may in future lead to allocation limits being placed on the groundwater.
The other question is a more fundamental one, and one that is important to solve at a national level. Is it right to export a precious commodity without getting any value for New Zealand?
It has been pointed out the value added in jobs and dollars by exporting the water in an apple is significant. But even then -- do we get the full value out of a raw apple -- could we extract more value by processing those apples?
This is a challenge that faces all our primary industry from forestry to dairy; do we move up the processing chain far enough to realise the best value?
As to the future of mass export of New Zealand water, it is time to take up this debate nationally to consider whether there is a need to change the water allocation methodology to ensure that it is to the benefit of New Zealand.
Christine Scott is deputy chair of the Hawke's Bay Regional council.
Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.