Bottlers pay 1c for 3000 litres
Special report: Waging war over water
It was the summer of 1983 when Poroti Springs first ran dry. The watercress stopped growing, the eels disappeared and the koura died, unable to survive as their habitat turned to dust.
Local hapu, the kaitiaki of the sacred Northland springs, were dismayed at the near-extinction of the mauri, or life-force, and the loss of their traditional food source.
The culprit? The Whangarei City Council, who, unable to get to the springhead because it was on Maori land, had drilled directly into the aquifer upstream and sucked up so much water for the town supply that the seemingly endless flow ran out.
So began one of the bitterest battles in New Zealand’s war for water, a case at the heart of water rights arguments now reaching boiling point in communities nationwide.
“Poroti is a perfect example of why there needs to be an urgent conversation about water in this country,” says Green MP Catherine Delahunty, a long-time freshwater campaigner.
“The relationships and rights there under both Maori and Pakeha law were clearly established. If you can trample on Poroti you can trample on anywhere.”
Central to the Poroti case — and dozens of others around New Zealand — is the issue of water ownership and whether foreigners should be able to take water for free.
At present, common law dictates that naturally flowing freshwater is treated as a public good, that “no one owns the water”.
As such, there are no charges for water in New Zealand, only for infrastructure — like maintenance of the pipes that bring it to your house — or for resource consent application and monitoring fees paid to regional councils by water users such as farmers, horticulturists or bottlers. (To complicate things, charges are often based on a per-litre rate.)
Water is allocated under the Resource Management Act (RMA). The water “take” is usually a set amount per day, or year, and often has a flow limit attached, to ensure too much is not removed at once.
Recently, however, there have been several challenges to that management model — notably by environmentalists, iwi and, increasingly, a public angry about bottled water exports.
Many of the arguments have gone hand-in-hand with the idea that commercial users should pay a fee.
The environmental argument is probably the best known. Water quality advocates say large takes from rivers or underground aquifers are depleting and polluting resources.
In rivers such as the Selwyn in Canterbury, drought combined with ongoing irrigation has seen the flow at extremely low levels over summer.
Combined with dairy “runoff” — the leaching of nitrates and phosphates into waterways — this has upset the delicate ecological balance in the waterway and, in some areas, left it polluted.
Environmentalists argue better management is needed to ensure water quality is preserved.
The iwi challenge centres on the unresolved issue of Maori rights to freshwater. While the Crown mantra remains “no one owns water”, many Maori disagree, citing the customary rights they exercised before colonisation. Further to that, a 2012 Waitangi Tribunal decision found that in some cases Maori also had proprietary rights, or ownership rights. The tribunal has yet to produce its final report setting out how the Treaty rights may be recognised in modern circumstances.
In any case, Waitangi Tribunal rulings are not binding and the recommendations may be dismissed.
However the chairman of the Maori Council, Sir Edward Durie, who took the claim, said the council’s hope was that any recommendations would pave the way for some kind of royalty fee — part of which could go to iwi to assist in their role of protecting the waterways.
“For us, it’s not a question of ‘nobody owns water’, it’s more that everyone owns water,” he said. “And then there are public interest and commercial interests and then we say there is also Maori interests — and that interest is not being provided for.”
Durie said current provisions in law — which required Maori to be consulted in their role as kaitiaki — were not enough, and they wanted stronger recognition.
“Some in government may think these things can’t be owned. We say they can be owned under our law and we want authority — mana — over them.”
The third challenge over water ownership is more recent. Unease at the increasing number of bottling companies — particularly foreignowned ones — has led to protests around the country over the corporate use of water.
Figures obtained by the Herald found there are now 73 companies with consent to take up to 23 billion litres a year, for an average annual fee of just $200 each.
On a volume basis, that works out at one third of a cent per cubic metre of water (1000 litres). In comparison, an Auckland ratepayer is charged $1.40 a cubic litre by the council, with the rest of the country paying anywhere from 70c to $3 to tap into their local supply.
“Basically, the companies are getting the same water but paying bugger all for it,” says campaigner Jen Branje, from the group Bung The Bore. “It’s an unfair equation.”
Branje was instrumental in organising a 16,000-name petition to Parliament over bottled water exports this year. She also helped bring to light the planned sale of a piece of land owned by Ashburton District Council with an annual right to 40 billion litres of water. It was eventually stopped.
Central to the argument against bottling is the idea that corporates are taking some of the country’s purest water — often from deep aquifers — while many communities are left with unsafe drinking water.
For example, the Havelock North outbreak, when thousands of people contracted a gastro bug from contaminated water in 2016, came amid public outcry at the presence of several new water exporters in the region — Hawke’s Bay now has 11 operators, who pay no annual fees.
In Hurunui, north of Christchurch, parts of the community have such poor quality water they are on permanent boil-water notices, a situation exacerbated by frequent drought.
Resident Colleen Johnson, who began a Facebook page for locals to air their complaints, says it was frustrating that at the same time private companies could take water.
“I think as New Zealanders we should have first priority. The highquality water should be coming to us,” she said. The popularity of her page proved she wasn’t alone, she said.
“I think it’s dawning on people that water is a necessity of life and it’s genuinely under threat.”
At Poroti, half an hour west of Whangarei, the main argument rests on an extremely strong claim to a proprietary right. However, it also involves a tangled web of government, farmers and most recently, a water bottler.
A Waitangi Tribunal report released last year described the history of Poroti. Three local hapu now known as the Whatitiri Trust — Te Urioroi, Te Parawhau, and Te Mahurehure — were vested the springs and surrounding two acres by the Government in 1896 to ensure a water supply for their people.
In addition, the water source held special significance for the hapu, who believed in the spring’s healing powers and therefore were bound to protect its mauri.
However it was also of interest to the Whangarei council as the highquality water made it ideal for a town drinking supply. Unwilling to find a better source, it drilled into the aquifer on the edge of the Maori land in the 1970s, and during the drought of 1983, refused to stop taking water until the spring ran dry.
After that catastrophe — and a similar incident in 1987 — the council was told by a special tribunal to close the bores above the springhead. By then, it had already moved downstream, where alongside the new Maungatapere Water Company, a consortium of farmers and horticulturists, it gained a new water take consent.
The hapu were not invited to share in the consortium, frustrating them as they were cut out of a share of an anticipated $15 million a year in revenue. Despite believing they had ownership of the springs, and a right to the water that then flowed into the stream, the Waipao, it was no longer theirs.
Then, in 2004, the bore site above the springhead, which was supposed to have been closed for good, was sold for $40,000. The buyer was a water bottling company, Zodiac Holdings, which now has a consent to take up to 365 million litres a year. The company is yet to take any water itself, instead building a website aimed at marketing the resource to China.
“We are now at the point where the whole spring is allocated — overallocated — for another 30 years,” said Whatitiri spokesman Millan Ruka. “And we have no say over it.”
He said the hapu had always been willing to share the water, as long as the mauri was protected, and it was able to have some input over what was taken. Instead, their water seemed likely to head abroad, and the spring’s viability was again under threat.
“We find it abhorrent that we are now back to square one where our springs are again going to be tapped at the bore site, and that Zodiac are marketing to sell the consent and lands to Chinese investors.”
Neither Zodiac nor the Whangarei City Council responded to requests for comment.
When the water bottling petition was presented at Parliament this year calling for a ban on exports, Environment Minister Nick Smith labelled it “farcical”. (It was later referred to a working group by Prime