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

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tehgerbil

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Topic # 248078 9-Mar-2019 17:04

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Stuff article. Interestingly NZ Herald have chosen to ignore it for now.

Environment Canterbury gave permission to Cloud Ocean Water and Rapaki Natural Resources to take 1.57 billion litres of water annually from two bores at the old Kaputone wool scour site on Station Rd, using decades-old consents.

The Christchurch City Council is considering an application by Cloud Ocean to build another factory.

On a personal note: as a father with 2 kids under 5 it's pretty damn clear that the laws 100% favour anyone wanting to take the water for a pittance, sell for eye-watering profits whilst absolutely pissing themselves at our laws. Which on the face of it, is kinda insane..

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Reply # 2194628 9-Mar-2019 17:07

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Same carry on here in Hawkes Bay

MikeB4

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Reply # 2194634 9-Mar-2019 17:25

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It is disgraceful when Kiwis are being asked to conserve water over summer and these companies continue to take what the please.

Mike
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loceff13

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Reply # 2194637 9-Mar-2019 17:36

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need a water tax for commercial resale, Fiji do it.

Behodar

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Reply # 2194643 9-Mar-2019 17:48

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MikeB4:

It is disgraceful when Kiwis are being asked to conserve water over summer and these companies continue to take what the please.

I saw a "conserve water" sign recently where someone had scrawled "China" over the front of it. Nothing else really needed to be said!

Oblivian

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Reply # 2194699 9-Mar-2019 18:47

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People keep associating it to our current water restrictions (result of over-run of Bore repairs needing more shutdowns and higher strain on working systems to redirect as some interconnected) incorrectly and using that as artillery. Totally different bores and isolated system

The media hasn't helped things. They keep making it look like were all getting shafted (yes, in a way since we see $0 of that other than 'wages' (yet to be proven if it employs many residents)) and brandishing large figures around like xBILLION L/year to stir up pitchforks

We know how social media and headlines work. Read the headline, make an opinion. Don't bother reading deeper into it. Its a click-bait world.

@talkieT spotted a bit of a flaw in 1 of the articles, comparing L to M^3 usage. When you re-calculated what they're taking is a drop in the water so to speak, compared to industrial and dairy use. But yes, I don't agree with their dodgy re-boring measures and how a bore used to clean sheepskins magically makes it OK for the next company to use and sell it instead for a $10 bit of paper.

Especially when there are these claims that 'noone' owns water. So they can't restrict who they sell the use of to. Yet they allow industrial control of it with a large cheque just like ground based oil

gzt

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Reply # 2194800 9-Mar-2019 21:48

It does not help that ECan has not yet returned to democracy and still has a large number of government appointees apparently:

Stuff 2015: "Democracy is our greatest asset yet National is denying Cantabrians a proper vote for almost a decade. Citizens deserve more than the second class council they are getting which the Government can continue to influence and dominate.

It's looking like a quick give away before democracy returns this year.

mentalinc

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Reply # 2194802 9-Mar-2019 21:58

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Agree it's 100% wrong, our water just shouldn't be sold overseas full stop

What annoys me most is the headlines are China this or that, makes it seem xenophobic, but the issue is we're giving away the resource WWIII is most likely going to be over.

NZ water should just not be for sale.

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Geektastic

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Reply # 2194816 9-Mar-2019 22:33

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Obviously the success of worldwide brands like Perrier, Evian, San Pellegrino etc has passed some people by...

Jase2985

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Reply # 2194853 10-Mar-2019 03:54

MikeB4:

It is disgraceful when Kiwis are being asked to conserve water over summer and these companies continue to take what the please.

better question to ask it why you are being asked that

is it because there is no/little water?

or is it because infrastructure cant keep up with the demand?

i wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter

Goosey

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Reply # 2194872 10-Mar-2019 07:55

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@tehgerbil:

Stuff article. Interestingly NZ Herald have chosen to ignore it for now.

That's because the Herald never really has much 'local' content for anything outside the north island.

Down here in the South Island...."the press" is the paper of record....(not sure how NZ Herald gets acclaimed to be NZ's paper of record).

elpenguino

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Reply # 2194930 10-Mar-2019 09:53

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i think the issues that come to light when these deals are made public are:

-should we be manufacturing millions of single use plastic water bottles when water is/should be available from a tap?

-the price of a water consent is amazingly low considering the value it holds

-why arent NZ companies stepping in to undertake this instead of the financial benefit going offshore?

The whole things makes NZ look a bunch of mugs who are ripe for the picking.

gzt

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Reply # 2194932 10-Mar-2019 09:58

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Jase2985:
MikeB4:

It is disgraceful when Kiwis are being asked to conserve water over summer and these companies continue to take what the please.

better question to ask it why you are being asked that

is it because there is no/little water?

or is it because infrastructure cant keep up with the demand?

i wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter

Residential water metering is voluntary in Wellington.

You can just about guarantee 20% of the users are 80% of the problem.

Usage dropped 25% when metering was implemented in Kapiti Coast council area.

Linux

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Reply # 2194934 10-Mar-2019 10:02

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Wait for the racist card to be thrown into the mix

irongarment

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Reply # 2194953 10-Mar-2019 10:23

elpenguino:
i think the issues that come to light when these deals are made public are:

-should we be manufacturing millions of single use plastic water bottles when water is/should be available from a tap?

-the price of a water consent is amazingly low considering the value it holds

-why arent NZ companies stepping in to undertake this instead of the financial benefit going offshore?

The whole things makes NZ look a bunch of mugs who are ripe for the picking.

This.

The water doesn't bother me (there's plenty of it, albeit maybe not in every location all the time). My biggest gripe is that we are essentially exporting tonnes of plastic which will be transported on a diesel-fume belching cargo ship and discarded in China (where lax environmental laws let the bottles end up in rivers and the sea).

tehgerbil

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Reply # 2194963 10-Mar-2019 10:56

Ok, so here's a quick run-down from what I understand..

Christchurch City has multiple bores getting water from the natural aquifer running deep under the Canterbury plains.

Their water team decided to essentially ignore the results of an audit which determined they fell well-short (pun intended) of current guidelines.

"Water New Zealand" (a non-profit who are heavily invested in water treatment) controversially weigh in to the debate and use this to push their "chlorination or else" agenda.

Christchurch City Council 'quits' any further discussions with Water New Zealand over their apparent conflict of interest and growing concern they're essentially using the controversy to further their own agenda.

During this time a Chinese company called "Cloud Ocean Water" (sic) took over from a decades old consent granted to Kaputone Wool Scour in Belfast.

Ecan rolled over and actually fought for Cloud Ocean Water, saying their taking over the consent did not constitute a change in Consent guidelines, and therefore could continue under the previous Consent granted decades ago.

AWA (Aotearoa Water Action) believes the historic consents – granted around 20 years ago – are insufficient to permit the firms to run bottling plants.

But lawyers for ECan argue commercial bottling is in itself an industrial use, and such operations are therefore permitted under the current consents.

Ultimately AWA won, however Cloud Ocean could still produce water.

Cloud Ocean had applied for a consent to drill a deeper bore, which the Christchurch City Council's Engineers determine was going to place future public use of water at risk .

This was approved by an "Environment Canterbury-appointed independent commissioner Richard Fowler. He decided the application did not meet the thresholds to be notified either publicly or in limited fashion.

So the approval for the deeper bore was granted by Ecan without any public say, or even the Council having any input.

Now the Council are having to disable well heads in order to upgrade them and make them compatible with the newer safer guidelines, however with a dry summer people are using too much to take them down without any customer impact forcing the council to implement water restrictions to minimise the impact of taking the heads offline to upgrade them.

And that is why people are (justifiably) very pissed off.

ECAN/CCC have completely poo'd the bed on this one and the ratepayers are being used as pawns while ECAN protects Chinese interests..

And the water chlorination industry tried to muscle in on Christchurch's water supply

Please feel free to correct me if I have made any mistakes. :)

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