Oh, I forgot; National were going to do just that in their proposed rewrite of the RMA " until Winston Peters won Northland and scuppered their plans. Guess this whining from the EPA is the revisionist way of keeping that intent alive.
Thank God for the (completely separate) Environment Court. Its ruling in favour of Ngati Kahungunu over the HBRC's proposed plan change that would have invited degradation to occur was clear and succinct. "To not aspire and attempt to at least maintain the quality of water abdicates the functions of a regional council."
Abdicating its responsibility by pursuing the Ruataniwha water storage scheme regardless of its more-than-minor adverse effects is bad enough; to undermine the entire protective mechanism for groundwater throughout the region was a step beyond too far.
I'm beginning to think the whole edifice of HBRC is corrupted in its purpose; I've always been a staunch supporter of regional councils by concept, but perhaps Hawke's Bay's one deserves to be dissolved under amalgamation.
As for the state of the main aquifer, permitting water-bottling companies to draw off a collective 3 billion litres per year may be small pickings compared with the estimated trillion litres the aquifer drains, but there are a few questions that haven't been adequately answered.
Such as: if the aquifer is in such good shape to withstand that impact, how come water restrictions have recently begun to be imposed? How come Bridge Pa wells went dry, and the village urgently needed reticulation? How come orchardists were prevented from taking their entitlement?
Could it be the problem is not with the overall flow, ginormous as it may be, but with the falling level of that flow? And if so, then surely greater uptake will only exacerbate this.
To say bottling plants on the coast will not affect supply upstream ignores that water finds its own level; lowering the level there will likely impact on levels under the plains, one would think.
Drought-hit California is using up its total water supply at unprecedented rates, with desperate farmers drilling like mad into ancient aquifers and using up those, too. Since the state grows more than 90 per cent of the US's common vegetables such as tomatoes and broccoli, it's a disaster in the making.
As it would be here. That the council does not seem to appreciate precaution is the better part of survival signals how cavalier they are with our most precious resource.
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
