Nobody owns the water in the rivers and lakes. It is a resource for everyone to use. So how can a local council sell the water?
The answer is that it sells the land and the buyer can take the water from aquifers under that piece of land. Ashburton Council in Canterbury is planning to sell this land to a foreign buyer who wants to build a water-bottling factory. The buyer could take 45 litres of water per second for the next 30 years but would have to return 60 litres a second from a canal.
The drinking water in Canterbury is very pure because it is filtered through gravel and sand. People overseas who don’t have clean drinking water would buy this bottled water.
This plan has been secret because the agreement has not yet signed. Now local people know about it and many of them are angry.
One problem is that this part of Canterbury is very dry because it does not have a heavy rainfall. There are now many dairy farms which have permission to use a certain amount of water for irrigation. This is called a resource consent. Farmers pay for the resource consent but they don’t pay for the water they use and probably some farmers use too much.
Another problem is that Maori were not told about this possible sale to a foreign buyer. Although no one owns the water, Maori have an interest in it. It is one of the taonga – treasures – which Queen Victoria promised to protect for Maori in the Treaty of Waitangi.
Listen to June 26 2008 to hear more about the Treaty of Waitangi or type ‘Treaty’ in the search box.
Vocabulary
• resource – things which have an economic use e.g. oil, minerals
• aquifers – a layer of rock, gravel, or sand underground containing water
• canal – an artificial river, built by man
• filter – material which separates solids from liquids (eg. filter paper which filters coffee grounds)
• permission, consent – a piece of paper which says they can take water from the ground
• irrigation – putting water on the land
• taonga (Maori) – something which Maori treasure like forest or rivers for gathering food
Question
1. Do you agree that no one owns the water?
2. Do you think businesses should pay for the water they use?