Minister’s attitude to water use ‘irresponsible’

While Chinese-owned company Cloud Ocean Water has consent to take over 1.5 billion litres of the public’s water per annum from Canterbury aquifers, Environment Minister Nick Smith’s indifferent reaction that only 2 per cent of NZ’s water is being used and it’s OK, shows an irresponsible attitude. Worse still it’s just one of the foreign exploitation of the public’s water. Billions of litres of water leave the country every year for sale overseas, driven by megacorporates, who pay nothing to use the public’s resource. In Kaiapoi, Japanese company Suntory Holdings (annual revenue over $30b), which owns Frucor, bottles its South Island sourced water, Kiwaii water.

The Environment Minister, with his engineering doctorate, should know better. The Selwyn, Irwell and other depleted rivers are mute testimony to the Government’s shortsighted exploitative drive. Ken Sims NZ Federation Freshwater Anglers Keep water in NZ We have just now allowed another foreign concern to buy one of our companies with a large water permit.

I know we don’t fish our own waters, manufacture our own rail stock or turn our wood into engineered beams for other earthquake-prone areas but at least we manage to produce and market our milk and wine; two far more complex products than water.

All this talk about putting a price on water is just smoke and mirrors. The truth is that any CEO of an overseas company worth his obscene salary will make sure to make the profit on selling our water, overseas.

The real problem is that we don’t own our own water bottling companies and market our own water as we do milk and wine. Then all that is necessary is to tax these ridiculously profitable companies as we do any other company. William Hughes-Games Waipara