If water bottlers pay, shouldn't everyone?

Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule speaking at the water symposium in Havelock North yesterday. Photo/Warren Buckland

The issue of getting water for free, bottling it and sending it overseas has become very emotive amid recent concerns about water shortages and contamination.

Giving his perspective on the issue and the changing uses of water in Hawke's Bay, Miracle Water director Trevor Taylor joined yesterday's water symposium via recorded video.

Mr Taylor said his company Elwood Road Holdings had held a consent to take 386,000 cu m of water for seven years, and at the time of acquiring it there was no dissent.

In 2015, he was introduced to some Chinese resident New Zealanders who had been exporting infant formula and entered into a 50/50 joint venture - Miracle Water.

The water take consent had now lifted to 820,000 cu m over three years, but with problems encountered with the bladders the water was exported in, this consent had not as yet been fully exercised.

He said the water take, which came from an 80m-deep bore, had been thoroughly scrutinised.

"To get that consent we needed scientific testing of the bores - part of that entailed putting through 90 litres of water per second for 48 hours and monitoring six bores within a 1km radius of the site - taking that water had no impact on those bores."

He said the product was targeted at new mothers in Asia looking for pure water to mix with baby formula, and that Miracle Water would bring benefits to Hawke's Bay, including $10 million spent on a new factory, and $5m spent on the plant and equipment, using an expected 60 employees from the local workforce.

"I have been in Hastings for some 70 years, while I'm not a scientist I have a sense of what's happening."

He said he had seen the land used for orcharding in the area fall from 13,500ha to 9500ha.

He had seen factories such as Leopard Breweries, J Wattie Canneries, the Tomoana and Whakatu meatworks and local woolscourers close or go into foreign ownership.

"The question is should bottled water be paid for?

"Maybe it should, but then shouldn't breweries, wineries, food processors, dairy farmers, woolscourers all pay for it as well?"

Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule acknowledged that at 90 litres a second, the plant was consented to take just under what came out of Brookvale Bore 3 for municipal supply - 100 litres a second.

In New Zealand, however, it was illegal to charge for water.

"There would have to be a law change, and that's being looked at by all political parties."

Audience member questions included one asking why the Hastings water supply could not come from the same area as the likes of Miracle Water, which had tapped into a confined aquifer.

"We know there are deeper aquifers in the Haumoana and Tomoana areas," Mr Yule said, adding that those areas had not yet been tested for young water.

"We can drill deeper wells but until we understand what the young water we are seeing means, it might not be the right thing to do.

"At the moment we do not fully understand where the young water is, what's causing it and where it may go to."

As the law stood, he said if anyone wanted to set up a water bottling plant they could do so, taking into account the Hawke's Bay Regional Council's recent move requiring any requested consents for such activity be notified.

"They [water bottlers] are treated the same as irrigators and other industrial users. The only way that will change is through a regional policy change or a legislative change."