Peter Richardson is Co-Convenor of Aotearoa Water Action.

For the last year or so Aotearoa Water Action (AWA) has been battling to overturn resource consents granted by the regional council, Environment Canterbury (ECan), to two water mining companies, to take approximately 24 million litres of water per day from aquifers beneath Belfast in the northern suburbs of Christchurch.

While the debate has at times been diverted to the question of “economic” rights to a scarce resource, for AWA the issues have always been around security and sovereignty – essentially the rights of communities to have access to a secure and sustainable source of drinking water, and to manage their water resources in the best interests of their community.

These are issues that have troubled the people of Canterbury for some time already, as corporate industrial dairy farming has devastated the unique natural environment of Canterbury, drying up rivers, damaging habitats essential for marine and other life, and releasing millions of kilograms of nitrate and other contaminants into waterways and to land.

This assault on the natural habitat, and communities’ rights, was facilitated by the then National government when, in 2010, it sacked ECan’s elected Councillors and appointed its own people to the Board. As the then Green Party Co-Leader, Russel Norman, commented at the time: “It’s really bad for democracy in Canterbury and its really bad for water in Canterbury … it means they will give out irrigation rights to all the big dairy corporations in Canterbury”. So, it proved, and it also heralded an easy path for water mining interests when they turned their attention to our free and high quality water.

In 2016 ECan granted the Ashburton District Council a consent to take 1.4 billion litres annually from a bore on Council land in an industrial park in the town, notwithstanding that the water was to be taken from an over-allocated “red” zone in terms of ECan’s own regional plan, and that the region was then in the grip of a drought and under water restrictions. Council then began the process of hawking the land and consent to foreign buyers. Ultimately, however, community opposition led by water campaigner Jen Branje, and the advent of local elections which saw the unseating of the pro-sale Mayor and most of his Council, put an end to the sale. A rare win for community sovereignty, but dependent on the fact that the consent was held by the local Council rather than a private corporate.

Another difficulty identified with the Bung the Bore campaign in Ashburton was its inability to raise sufficient funds to mount a legal challenge to the grant of consent. Unfortunately, once a decision is made by the regulator not to notify a consent application, community groups are effectively limited to bringing High Court judicial review proceedings to challenge the process by which that decision was made. Such proceedings are inevitably costly, and the Ministry for the Environment’s Environmental Legal Assistance Fund cannot provide assistance funding as it can for Environment Court processes.

This is an issue AWA believes the present Government needs to address.

Legal Challenge

In 2017 ECan again granted consents to enable Chinese-owned corporate Cloud Ocean Water Limited and New Zealand-owned Rapaki Natural Resource Limited to take water for bottling in Canterbury, this time from the Belfast aquifers. The consents relied on pre-existing industrial consents which were granted some 20 years ago for industrial purposes, and had never been fully utilised. Again, they were granted at a time when Christchurch was threatened with water restrictions, and when the effects of climate breakdown were becoming very evident, except to those who have a vested interest in denying the obvious.

A small group of us who had been involved in the Bung the Bore campaign decided, having researched the way in which the consents had been processed, that ECan had again failed to comply with its own rules, or with the Resource Management Act. Given the absence of any alternative, and perhaps naively confident in the community’s readiness to fund a legal challenge, we launched a fund-raising and media campaign in support of judicial review proceedings. In approximately six weeks we managed to raise the $40,000 we believed we needed to take the case. Those funds were raised entirely from public donations.

Our first hearing took place in the High Court at Christchurch on 2 October, 2018, to consider a defence raised by Cloud Ocean that it didn’t require fresh consents but was entitled to rely on the existing industrial consents, given the broad way in which the consent documents were originally written. If we are successful, it means the main plank of our arguments will be heard early in 2019.

In the meantime, however, Cloud Ocean is continuing as if its’ position is unassailable. It is currently bottling and exporting water from a 33m deep bore on site. Readers may be aware from recent news media articles that the bottle labelling and carton packaging falsely state that the water is being taken from a 200m deep bore. Cloud Ocean has been granted consent by ECan to drill a bore at 180m, but does not yet have consent to take water from that bore.

Cloud Ocean has stated that the labelling will be changed when the bottles reach China, but their track record of compliance with New Zealand laws, or indeed any ethical practices, gives considerable cause for doubt. They have so far been issued with an abatement notice for breaching the minimal conditions of their existing resource consent and have been investigated by WorkSafe (and we understand, briefly closed down) for operating an unsafe workplace. Information AWA has received indicates that their bottling plant workforce are employed on the minimum wage and are non-unionised.

Cloud Ocean has just lodged an application to take water from its deep bore, which will be our next battleground. AWA will be giving notice to ECan of its view that the consent application either cannot be processed, or at least must be publicly notified. If ECan takes a contrary view (as past history suggests it will), we will again be having to try to fundraise for a further legal challenge. Rapaki, the other consent holder, has transferred one of its consents to Cloud Ocean and is, as we understand it, actively marketing its land and associated consents.

Issues Which Threaten NZ’s Sovereignty

During the course of AWA’s Belfast campaign, and others we have followed and supported, we have uncovered issues which are directly relevant to our nation’s sovereignty. Firstly, the extent to which the Government, acting through New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, has facilitated the expansion into Aotearoa/New Zealand of foreign-owned water mining companies. While the recent news articles prompted by the research of Niki Gladding, one of our members, highlighted NZTE’s involvement in introducing Nongfu to the Otakiri operation near Whakatane, it also suggests Government involvement in facilitating other operations.

Secondly, the abusive and unethical practices of foreign-owned water mining companies (as highlighted above), and the minimal benefit to the New Zealand economy in their operations. The experience of the Cloud Ocean operation suggests that workforces are comprised largely of immigrant labour employed at minimum wage rates, and that much of the capital spending in the business will be for the benefit of the Chinese economy, rather than the local economy. As just one example, when the story of the misleading labelling broke, it was revealed by Cloud Ocean that the packaging was supplied from China, rather than locally.

Thirdly, the extent to which successive Governments (probably deliberately given their decades-long support for predatory foreign corporates) have prevented Aotearoa/New Zealand from adopting policies, or taking effective actions, to either prevent the taking of our most critical life-giving resource, or at least paying for the privilege of doing so.

In fact, the great irony revealed in the NZTE correspondence was that Nongfu was prepared to pay a resource rental, but was never required to do so. And despite this Government stating that it would bring in a levy on bottled water leaving the country, as Newsroom recently reported, the matter “appears to have stalled, with the Government still trying to find a workaround that won’t breach our free trade deals”. Unfortunately, given the Government’s ongoing support of exploitative, low-value economic models, their solution may well be to strike a deal with the water mining corporates that allows them to continue to over-exploit water resources in a time of climate crisis, in return for some easy money.

To be very clear, AWA opposes any taking of water for bottling that threatens the water security and safety of local communities, and ecological health. The effect of predatory water mining corporates has largely been ignored or understated in Aotearoa/New Zealand. That is perhaps understandable given the obvious and massive damage being done to our environment and to community safety by Big Dairy. However, it is a very real issue and one that will come increasingly to the fore in the next decades unless it is defeated.

Water Mining Very Profitable For Global Corporates

Throughout the world, water mining has become a very profitable business for some of the largest global corporates. In fact, bottled water is now the largest beverage category by total volumes sold worldwide, with sales expected to reach $US350 billion by 2021. It is also an industry that is in its infancy but experiencing year on year growth of around 10% globally.

“Manufactured” demand is leading corporates such as Nestle and Coca-Cola to acquire ownership or rights to some of the largest aquifers in the world, notwithstanding that a recent National Geographic report noted that a majority of the world’s major aquifers are being steadily depleted beyond their ability to recharge. The same report estimated that by 2050, 1.8 billion of the world’s population were likely to live in areas where groundwater reserves are fully or nearly depleted.

Much of the bottled water extracted globally of course flows to poorer countries that have failed to properly manage their own water resources, often a result of the effects of many years of colonial or corporate exploitation. In that capitalist version of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” the availability of bottled water serves to disincentivise communities from reclaiming their water sovereignty and their ability to effectively manage the resource in their own interests.

The industry of course also produces a staggering amount of plastic waste, the majority of which ends up in landfills or in the marine environment, damaging wildlife and ultimately endangering the food chain on which humanity depends. As an example of the scale of this problem, the consents granted to extract water from the Belfast aquifers alone, if fully utilised (which we believe they ultimately would be), would generate some 15 billion 500ml plastic bottles annually. 

AWA is committed to taking whatever legal steps it can to prevent the expansion of water mining as an industry in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We are constrained by the negligence and collusion of central and local governments which have failed to recognise the risk to our safety and sovereignty in this exploitative, dangerous industry, and by the usual funding costs which limit the ability of individuals and communities to oppose predatory global corporates.

We would invite anyone who would like to support our campaigns in any way, to visit our Website www.aotearoawateraction.org, or our Facebook pages Aotearoa Water Action – AWA, and Bottle Off – Stop the Belfast Bottling Plants.