Editorial: Politics not bureaucracy to fix water

Placing a moratorium on the granting of further water consents for bottling plants has received positive feedback.

I have received positive feedback to our support of Hastings Deputy Mayor Cynthia Bowers' call for the regional council to look at placing a moratorium on the granting of further water consents for bottling plants.

Ms Bowers said a temporary embargo should be put in place until further research has been undertaken on the Heretaunga Plains aquifer.

There is also a general feeling out there amongst the public that our water should not be given away free for export to China.

Many of our readers think that Hawke's Bay, through our councils, should be paid for any water sent offshore.

While it is obvious that we want jobs created here, and water bottling plants provide that, a stocktake may be needed to see how we can change the law to allow the council or other councils to be paid for water from our land.

I was expecting a response from the regional council and I got one, although it did not come from the level I expected.

In a letter to the editor, two council officials - Hawke's Bay Regional Council Group Manager Resource Management, Iain Maxwell, and Group Manager Strategic Development James Palmer - said the issue was comprehensively covered in a paper to a council planning committee meeting last year.

They went on to say that the council does not have the legal authority to impose moratoria.

Their response was predictable. From a bureaucratic point of view they are right and as paid employees of the council they are constrained in what they can do.

I had expected the elected council members to respond to the situation, because this is not a bureaucratic problem - never has been. It needs a political solution.

What is required is for our councillors, on all the affected councils, to find a way to do what surely is in the best interest of the Bay.