Council opposes bottling company’s bid
The Christchurch City Council has come out swinging in its opposition to a bottling company’s bid to take millions of litres of water from a key aquifer following fears it could threaten drinking supplies.
The council is challenging a resource consent application by China-owned Cloud Ocean Water to extract water from a 186 metredeep bore at its Belfast plant.
It is demanding that Environment Canterbury (ECan) not progress Cloud Ocean’s consent without a thorough assessment into the potential impacts on the public drinking water supply.
Cloud Ocean already has consent to extract more than 1.5 billion litres of water a year from a shallow bore, but now wants the ability to take some or all of that water from a second, deeper bore.
The bore is in an area where the council expects a 50 per cent increase in demand during the next 30 years.
Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel said the council opposed the application because it could undermine its ability to meet future demand for water – a risk the council was not prepared to take.
‘‘We need to make sure we protect our wells so we can meet that forecast increase in demand.’’
ECan has yet to decide whether to publicly notify the application and the council has strongly requested that it opens the application to public submissions.
During a discussion yesterday on the council’s response to ECan, Cr Raf Manji questioned whether ECan was doing the job it was supposed to be doing, but said that was a bigger issue and the council needed to talk to central government about it.
In a statement, ECan rigorously defended its actions relating to Cloud Ocean Water, stating it too was committed to ensuring a safe supply of drinking water for Christchurch.
ECan assured people that ‘‘due process’’ would be followed and the city council’s evidence on potential impact on aquifers and future drinking water supplies would be thoroughly reviewed.
‘‘We understand that water bottling is an issue of intense interest to some members of the community,’’ the statement said.
‘‘It is also complicated in terms of what each regulatory body can and can’t do within the rules [and even who sets which rules].’’
ECan said the Resource Management Act did not differentiate between nationalities, and any person was legitimately able to make an application.
‘‘The issue of Christchurch water ‘going offshore’ or being ‘given to outsiders’ is therefore not one we can consider as part of our regulatory role. We will consider Cloud Ocean’s consent application as we would any other consent application.’’
Dalziel said it was important for people to understand the council’s opposition to Cloud Ocean’s application was unrelated to the council’s request for people to use less water this summer.
The city was not short of water, but had asked people to conserve so it could shut down some wells to upgrade them and get the chlorine out.
‘‘It is an infrastructure, not a supply issue.’’