Neighbouring suburban Christchurch water bottling plants can tap billions of litres

Friday, 1 September 2017

The site of one of two neighbouring water bottling plants in Belfast, Christchurch.

Neighbouring water bottling plants in suburban Christchurch will have combined access to nearly 9 billion litres of water a year.

It amounts to the equivalent water usage of nearly 70,000 people, drawn from the same aquifers used for the city's drinking water.

The adjoining Belfast plants have the necessary approvals. Neither sites had begun construction.

It comes amid an election campaign where water bottling has emerged as a hot political issue.

* For sale: 40 billion litres of Canterbury's purest water

* From national park to overseas: Plan to export billions of litres of West Coast water

* The bottled water giants who are taking our water**

Due to the Government's position that no-one owns water, it cannot be priced, which allowed companies to take and export water at a negligible cost.

It meant neither plant would pay to use the water, but would pay a one-off resource consent fee and ongoing compliance monitoring costs, likely amounting to a few hundred dollars per year.

One of the plants, on a former Silver Fern Farms site, was granted permission last month to vary two resource consents to allow water bottling.

Its combined allowable take, across eight bores, was around 7.4 billion litres per year, its resource consent documents show.

The consents were granted in 1997 and 2001 respectively, and transferred with the property when it was sold. It was unclear how much of the consented water was being used because monitoring was not required at the time the consents were issued.

Local property developer Phil Burmester was behind the project. He was formerly a director of water bottling company Naturally Pure NZ and started a new company called Southern Alps Artesian Water last month, company records show.

A Burmester-owned company had also bought the neighbouring Kaputone Wool Scour, which was sold earlier this year to Cloud Water Ltd, a company partly owned by Chinese investors.

That company also planned to build a water bottling plant, with access to around 1.5 billion litres a year. It had already awarded a contract to build a bore.

Christchurch's aquifers contain pure water sourced from the Southern Alps, which filters through gravels beneath the Waimakariri River. It was used untreated for the public water supply, which is hailed as among the highest quality in the world.

However, the aquifers had reached record lows in recent years. Streams in the city had dried up and wells were being dug deeper. There had been long-standing concern about how long the supply would last, given it could take decades or centuries for the water to recharge.

Green party leader James Shaw said the water bottling situation was 'ridiculous', particularly given the water was being drawn from aquifers, which were a finite resource.

'It's the rarest and purest water in the country,' he said.

'The idea that a company can come along and take that water out of the ground effectively for free, bottle it and ship it overseas… it's outrageous.'

He said placing a value on a finite resource would make companies use it more efficiently. It was also a matter of fairness for the community.

Water bottling was particularly galling in areas where nearby communities were put on water restrictions, Shaw said.

Labour, the Greens, New Zealand First, the Maori Party and the Opportunities Party all supported a royalty of some sort on bottled water. A Newshub poll in June found 87 per cent of people supported a bottling royalty.

National has resisted putting a price on water, but referred the issue to an advisory group due to report back after the election.

The Greens would put in place an interim 10 cents per litre levy on bottled water sales before coming up with a permanent pricing scheme. Labour would impose a per litre price, which had yet to be determined but would likely be 1-2c per litre.

Both NZ First and the Maori Party supported a moratorium on water bottling exports.

Burmester was unavailable for comment as he was in China.