Huge crowd at water protest in Christchurch - Protesting billions of litres being shipped overseas

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surfisup1000

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#2195566 11-Mar-2019 09:25

Batman: If you want to stop pollution first ban wood burners (>8hrs/day release of toxins) and ban animal farming (24 hr release), followed by banning of imports and exports of any goods to NZ (sheer distance).

I can't stand wood burners. You are inhaling millions of toxic particles into your lungs when people burn wood for heat. The smell is awful.

Oblivian

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#2195567 11-Mar-2019 09:25

The difference in Canterbury, is the water is from aquifers under the city. Where it accumulated from the foothills soaking and springs. The time it comes out the tap it may be quite aged.

A river tends to be a water in (alpine rain) water out sceanrio in most cases. Yes they flow to the sea, but watering schemes harness a portion of this along the way also. It could be considered a parallel unharnessed source. Unlike other regions that tap river gorges for storage and distribution method.

surfisup1000

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#2195574 11-Mar-2019 09:36

Fred99:

trig42:

A billion litres, while an incomprehensible amount for most people to get their heads around, literally is a drop in the bucket.

Yes - but a billion single-use 1 litre plastic water bottles is more than a drop in the bucket.

This is a protest about the chinese taking water, not the way it is packaged. Read the OP link.

....

"We want them to prohibit the taking of our water, it's as simple as that."

I'd only drink bottled water if I lived in China. Better than dying early from some toxic metal poisoning from drinking polluted water.

I don't think New Zealanders need to drink bottled water, though. The tap water is just fine , unless you live in hawkes bay.

gzt

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#2195602 11-Mar-2019 10:02

trig42:
Fred99:

trig42:

A billion litres, while an incomprehensible amount for most people to get their heads around, literally is a drop in the bucket.

Yes - but a billion single-use 1 litre plastic water bottles is more than a drop in the bucket.

I don't disagree with that, but I don't think that's what people are outraged about or protesting about. It seems to me they are unhappy that someone else is profiting from what they view as a precious limited natural resource that they really aren't paying for.

Likewise I don't know about the protests. I assume in part it's because the company paid $2237 for the resource and there is no return on that. I assume in part because it's a resource management issue.

Groundwater and aquifers. It is often a large resource - it is not an unlimited resource. It tends to become even more in demand when other sources have been exhausted or compromised.

tdgeek

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#2195605 11-Mar-2019 10:06

gzt:
trig42:

Fred99:

trig42:

A billion litres, while an incomprehensible amount for most people to get their heads around, literally is a drop in the bucket.

Yes - but a billion single-use 1 litre plastic water bottles is more than a drop in the bucket.

I don't disagree with that, but I don't think that's what people are outraged about or protesting about. It seems to me they are unhappy that someone else is profiting from what they view as a precious limited natural resource that they really aren't paying for.

Likewise I don't know about the protests. I assume in part it's because the company paid $2237 for the resource and there is no return on that. I assume in part because it's a resource management issue.

Groundwater and aquifers. It is often a large resource - it is not an unlimited resource. It tends to become even more in demand when other sources have been exhausted or compromised.

From what I gather and as the angry Neighbourly posts, is that farmers and bottlers do not affect ChCh City. I believe the bottlers should be paying a royalty, and I would hope there is a T+C that states "CCC can suspend supply at any time if we have a water issue"

There will be an employment benefit to Chch environs

gzt

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#2195610 11-Mar-2019 10:13

surfisup1000: This is a protest about the chinese taking water, not the way it is packaged. Read the OP link.

I wasn't there but the article gives no indication it was a xenophobic activity of that kind. The article does show at least one sign that is against plastic bottles.

Water bottling has become an international environmental issue and it would not surprise me if many people at the protest were motivated simply by that aspect alone.

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Fred99

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#2195618 11-Mar-2019 10:19

surfisup1000:

Fred99:

trig42:

A billion litres, while an incomprehensible amount for most people to get their heads around, literally is a drop in the bucket.

Yes - but a billion single-use 1 litre plastic water bottles is more than a drop in the bucket.

This is a protest about the chinese taking water, not the way it is packaged. Read the OP link.

Yes I realise that, and I also realise that they've got it wrong.

The way it's packaged actually is an issue, but of course the same applies to everything in single use plastic, so the protestors may as well picket the local cola factory, milk factory, supermarkets etc. 480 billion used a year (according to Wikipedia).

gzt

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#2195790 11-Mar-2019 12:39

I've just read a bunch of articles, press releases, and watched some YouTube videos of the protest. There were an enormous number of placards naming ECan as the problem, quite a number of placards against corporations, quite a number of placards against water bottling, various other environmental issue type placards. I saw exactly one sign saying 'china', and one saying 'chinese' waved by an older person. That is, near zero.

LookingUp

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#2195834 11-Mar-2019 14:10

From what I understand, tehgerbil summed up the sequence of events quite nicely way back up the thread. Overall though, and as galling as it may be, the result may still be a step forward from the prior situation when there was a wool scour and felmongery on the site, both using water AND creating copious effluent (and toxic) byproducts. Now that just the water is being taken, whether we like it or not, it's still a significant step forward - potential plastic waste aside.

I'm sure that the water consents held by Kapatone and Colyer Waston (or whatever it was last called) contributed to their ability to sell their land on the assumption that the rights would be transferable, which may well have contributed to them closing down or moving on, or whatever happened to them. I don't know the details of the deals, but back in the 90's I did do work in both those factories so know what I'm talking about on the unpleasant byproducts front!

Onto another point of contention - irrigators, especially centre pivots, spraying away during hot and windy nor'west days. I recently went to a paper presentation at a conference where this had been examined scientifically, as the authour was looking to quantify losses so that they could advise on irrigation efficiency. The extremely interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive result was that it actually makes very little difference to watering efficiency! The reason - while (as expected) not all water makes it to the ground on hot and windy days, it does have the net effect of mitigating evapotranspiration, which is moisture loss due to plants and general evaporation from the soil. What this means is that while not all water delivered is being added to the soil, not all water that would have naturally left the soil if the irrigation wasn't happening is leaving the soil either, and it's close to balancing out. Even the guy presenting the paper had to admit that this was not the result they were expecting to see!

Just a couple of points to mitigate the hysteria, as there are often more to things than meet the eye...

Geektastic

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#2196153 11-Mar-2019 22:30

irongarment:
Geektastic:

elpenguino:

Geektastic:

irongarment:
surfisup1000:

Geektastic:

I just don't see the issue. NZ is virtually drowning in water. The West coast is almost permanently soaking every time I go there and every time I cross a river I see thousands of cubic metres of water a minute destined to do nothing but end up in the sea.

Correct.

People instinctively think they should be against it, but can't figure out why. I think the reasons are xenophobic and envy, but people subconsciously disguise those reasons as 'water shortages' .

Bottled water is environmentally unfriendly. Discuss.

It isn't. Why would it be? What improves the environment allowing the water to flow into the sea as opposed to into bottles you can sell?

Environment stuff is fine, but you can't spend it .

Money's fine but you can't drink it.

There is no danger of running out of water. We let millions of litres a month drain into the sea...

It's not the water. At least, my opposition to the bottling plant is not the water. It's the plastic. We are essentially exporting plastic. This will end up in waterways and the sea in China, because that's what happens there. Do you really want millions of empty plastic bottles (clearly labelled as coming from clean, green, New Zealand) in rivers, by the side of the road, and in the sea?

We should not be opposing the bottling plant because it's taking water (it's water, there'll be more later) we should be opposing it because bottling water is polluting. Can you see that?

Should we also be complaining to Fonterra? Puhoi Valley? Mobil? Coca Cola Amitil? I bet they all produce WAY more plastic bottles in NZ than this water company.

Yes, glass would be better (Perrier and San Pellegrino are both usually packaged in glass for example) but there are many other NZ liquid processors that provide product in plastic bottles in far greater numbers.

irongarment

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#2196282 12-Mar-2019 08:27

Geektastic:
Should we also be complaining to Fonterra? Puhoi Valley? Mobil? Coca Cola Amitil? I bet they all produce WAY more plastic bottles in NZ than this water company.

Yes, glass would be better (Perrier and San Pellegrino are both usually packaged in glass for example) but there are many other NZ liquid processors that provide product in plastic bottles in far greater numbers.

Yes, indeed we should. Packaging should be reduced to the bare minimum, and should be recyclable, reusable, or biodegradable.

Glass is a great packaging material, however it's heavy, so causes pollution when you transport it. This might be mitigated by its supreme reusability, but I don't know.

Putting tap water in a glass bottle and shipping it from Europe is immensely more damaging than putting yogurt in a styrene pot and shipping it around New Zealand. And due to the small population here the local impact on the environment of what we do is tiny. Perrier is shipped around the world.

My guess is you like to drink Perrier and San Pellegrino and can't abide people telling you it's extremely environmentally unfriendly.

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Batman

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#2196312 12-Mar-2019 09:14

It's not about the plastic.

The way I see it, it's about the sentiment that the government is allowing someone from overseas to take something for free and make millions off it.

irongarment

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#2196316 12-Mar-2019 09:17

Batman:
It's not about the plastic.

The way I see it, it's about the sentiment that the government is allowing someone from overseas to take something for free and make millions off it.

Ok then. Perhaps some enterprising Kiwi could do the same thing.

Geektastic

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#2196318 12-Mar-2019 09:19

Batman:
It's not about the plastic.

The way I see it, it's about the sentiment that the government is allowing someone from overseas to take something for free and make millions off it.

It's entirely possible for Kiwis to do the same, if they can be bothered to take the opportunity.

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