Juice company moots rule change
A proposal by a Hawke’s Bay fruit juice company wanting to produce bottled water has prompted a review of the region’s strict rules regarding the contentious activity.
In 2016, following widespread concern about water bottling, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council introduced a policy requiring all resource consent applications for water bottling to be publicly notified, meaning any person could have their say and applications could go to a hearing.
There have been no applications since 2016. But a recent presentation to the council this month by Apollo Foods requested the council reconsider its position when a water-take consent already exists and the user only wants to alter the permitted use of water to include water bottling.
A staff paper that went before councillors on Wednesday said there was an opportunity to reconsider the council’s approach.
Apollo Foods produces juice and other ‘‘high-value beverage products’’ including milk drinks in partnership with Fonterra from its plant at Whakatu, Hastings.
The company told the council it needed to provide bottled drinking water to compete with rivals.
It has consent to draw 401,700 cubic metres of water from the Heretaunga aquifer each year until 2037. It wants to use up to 20 per cent of that for water bottling.
The paper noted that water bottling remained a contentious issue, but that many of the concerns people had, such as foreign ownership and the use of plastic bottles, did not relate to this site.
The paper said the current approach of requiring notification ‘‘may frustrate local initiatives’’ seeking to produce bottled water in order to compete with larger multinational companies.
The approach could be viewed as predetermination and open to judicial review, it said.
Options for consideration included: keeping the status quo; altering the approach to allow notification to occur on on a ‘‘case by case’’ basis determined by councillors or commissioners; initiating a plan change requiring notification of all water bottling activities; and reverting to the pre-2016 approach, when staff would decide whether an application had to be notified on a case-by-case basis.
Councillors said they would consult the regional planning committee before making a decision.