New Zealand Water Exports to Come Under Scrutiny
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Government
New Zealand government will ask an advisory group that is part of the Ministry for the Environment to investigate the questions around exporting water.
Water rights campaigners want freshwater exports stopped until resource consent
issues can be explored. Photo: Bung the bore
Water rights campaigners presented a 15,000-signature petition to Parliament last week, calling for a moratorium on water exports.
Prime Minister Bill English said the government was responding to that public concern.
"The priority for the Land and Water Forum, as for the government, was and still is the quality of freshwater.
"It's looked at it under allocation, which is this whole process of seeing how you could move away from first-come first-served to a sort of more economic allocation of the use of water."
Māori rights and interests would also be part of the discussion, among several other issues, he said.
"Well, just who gets to charge, who gets the revenue, what the charge might be, whether you can do that legally without establishing ownership of the water.
"New Zealand's long-held position is no-one owns the water and no-one actually pays for water, they pay for consents, they pay for infrastructure, but water itself is free."
Any issues to do with water were always "five times more complicated than you thought", Mr English said - and with a diverse range of interests involved.
"We just don't want to give the public the impression there's a simple, easy answer because we will almost certainly find there isn't - but if there is we''ll see where that goes."
Mr English said no moves would be made to charge companies for water before the election.
A leading economist is calling for the Government to start charging for water amid strong foreign interest in the resource.
Peter Fraser is battling what he calls the myth that New Zealand has an abundant supply of water. It's been one of the most enduring arguments from the current National Government.
Water belongs to the people - free, for anyone to enjoy. Now there's a call for that to change.
"As an economist, if no one owns anything, no one's got an incentive to look after it, so that's when you get overuse of it," Mr Fraser says.
He believes a charge is well overdue, calling it "absolutely necessary".
The technical advisory group was expected to report back at the end of the year or early next year.
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- Resource Management
- Freshwater
- Water Supply
- Water Export
- Drinking Water Managment
- Water Management
- Drinking Water
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