John MacDonald: At last, a cap on water bottling madness

I'm delighted with the Court of Appeal's decision to overturn consents given to Cloud Ocean Water Ltd and Rapaki Natural Resources Ltd to extract billions of litres of water each year. Photo / 123RF

OPINION:

How nuts was it that two water bottling companies were able to access some old industrial land north of Christchurch, and use the age-old water consents that went with the properties to take billions of litres of aquifer water, stick it in plastic bottles and ship it overseas for people to drink ... and not pay a single cent for the privilege?

A volume of 8.8 billion litres a year - or 24 million litres a day. It was absolutely nuts. And yesterday, the Court of Appeal said it was nuts too.

It didn't end there. It said Environment Canterbury, the regional council, cocked-up big time by allowing it to happen back in 2017. "Cocked up big time" wasn't exactly the terminology the Court of Appeal used. I don't think it used the word "nuts" either. But that was the gist of it.

The whole thing was nuts. ECan cocked-up. And I couldn't agree more.

It's exactly what the thousands of people who marched through the streets of Christchurch back in 2019 thought. And it's exactly what the Aotearoa Water Action group - which started the whole legal challenge - thought too.

Quite rightly, it said that ECan had acted unlawfully when it cobbled together existing water consents originally issued for meat processing and wool scouring operations on the two sites, so that the water bottlers could help themselves to water from Christchurch's aquifers. They didn't even publicly notify it.

The legal challenge started in the High Court but didn't get anywhere so the Aotearoa Water Action group went to the Court of Appeal, which announced yesterday that it thought what ECan did was definitely unlawful, and it should have required the companies to apply for a fresh consent because water bottling was not what the original consents were intended for.

The tricky thing is, that would have gone nowhere because all the aquifer water that ECan is responsible for is fully allocated - so it effectively rorted its own system. Absolutely shameful.

So, take that ECan. And take that Cloud Ocean Water and Rapaki Natural Resources, the two companies involved. Who may all yet appeal the ruling and they're being pretty tight-lipped on that front at the moment, which isn't surprising given the decision only came out yesterday.

But, for now anyway, let's give the thumbs up to the Court of Appeal and celebrate the fact that commonsense seems to be prevailing.

And your version of commonsense is probably different from the next person's. You might think the Court of Appeal's decision is commonsense because you're opposed to anyone making money out of a natural resource like water.

You might think it's commonsense because we were being ripped off by the bottlers who weren't paying anything for the water.

Maybe you were brassed off with ECan for rorting its own system and allowing the bottling to go-ahead.

Or maybe you were just anti the whole thing because it was foreigners making the money out of it.

Whatever your reason for opposing what was going on, it should never have happened.

I've already seen comments today asking why people were so outraged and opposed to the Chinese water bottlers taking aquifer water and selling it, but weren't so upset about farmers all around Canterbury taking truckloads of water and spraying it on their paddocks.

I've heard it said that the amount of water used to irrigate just four dairy farms in Canterbury over 12 months is about the same amount used by the whole of Christchurch city every year.

So it's probably quite fair to ask why people were so anti water-bottling, but not so concerned about irrigation, because farmers don't pay anything for the water, do they?

They invest a whole lot of money into the irrigation schemes and the equipment needed to get the water onto the paddocks - but, just like the water bottlers, they don't pay a cent for the water.

So is it time to put a price on water? If you want to bottle water - you've got to pay for it. If you want to irrigate your farm - you've got to pay for it.

I wouldn't be in favour of charging farmers for water. For the simple reason that they already invest heavily to get the water where it's needed. And why would you burden farmers with more costs when - unlike the Chinese water bottlers - the money our farmers make generally stays here in New Zealand.

And that's why I'm delighted with the Court of Appeal's decision. I wouldn't care whether the bottlers were from China, Timbuktu … anywhere. The fact that they paid nothing and New Zealand saw none of the profits, was ridiculous, and ECan should be ashamed for allowing it to happen.