Bruce Bisset: Water law lets the public down

Bruce Bisset.

Endless repetition of the "no one owns water" refrain will not make it true. It's merely an expedient excuse for legalised theft on a grand scale, with no benefit accruing for our country.

Foreign corporates - a handful boasting New Zealand shareholders, including high-ranked National Party members - are taking billions of litres of our purest water every year, bottling it, and shipping it overseas to sell - essentially, for free. Oh, save for the minor cost of getting a consent and a paltry few hundred a year for "monitoring", that is.

Why? Because, in law, this most precious and increasingly threatened resource is part of the public commons; a thing that has no monetary value attached, and belongs to everyone equally.

Except, of course, it doesn't. It "belongs" to those who give it away, and thereafter to whoever can make a buck from it.

The "no owner" line is a myth because, as soon as you allocate it, you are taking ownership of it - otherwise, how could you make such allocation? Ownership is inherent in having power to dispose of something.

Presiding over who gets what from where allocated to them are our regional and unitary councils, elected to administer resources on "everyone's" behalf.

Except they don't, really, do they? Well, they may "administer" it, but most do a pretty poor job of looking after it - "protecting and enhancing" in the words of the Resource Management Act - and their decisions are selective and arguably biased.

However, if, as prevailing legal thought holds, councils have no power to levy any form of charge on the water itself (regardless of volume or end use), then this situation is not their fault.

That lies firmly with central Government, who steadfastly refuse to step out from behind the mythic "no owner" shield - in part because they're scared of the implications when it comes to tangata whenua.

So scared they're busy instituting "co-management" models with iwi for lakes and rivers country-wide. Placatory models designed ostensibly to safeguard the environment - but not to take power over who gets what, because that would be dividing the public commons for one group's benefit.

So they keep it as it is: a model that disenfranchises everyone - except those able to gain a consent and spin a dollar from exploiting it.

Because, as soon as it's allocated, water magically gains monetary value. Anyone owning a water-take consent can on-sell the rights to any third party, without restraint. Which begs the question: if at allocation it suddenly has value, why can the Government not then charge a royalty? They do with oil.

Don't even start me on the ludicrous Ashburton saga, where pure aquifer water is given away free while ratepayers must pay to recharge said stressed aquifer with polluted groundwater. Everyone except the water thieves loses.

The only surprise is the rich taking so long to latch on to this. I guess the bottled-water craze - a fad given impetus by chronic shortages in many countries - is reason for the spike in investment.

Sure, it costs millions to set up a bottling plant and export business; but, when your base material is gratis, the upside's rather lucrative.

Do we mind? Hell, yes. Bad enough our water goes off to China or Finland instead of satisfying increasing demand here. To not charge even a cent for it, on the legal technicality of it having no owner in the first place, beggars belief.

Surely we, the public entity, own our water at source. It's about time we stopped it being stolen, decided what it's really worth - and charged like wounded bulls.

That would be entirely fair.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.