Bruce Bisset: Water woes not just on surface

Seems to me it's time we realised that just because you can't see the damage doesn't mean it's not happening and that applies as much under the land as under the sea.

Clean fresh water is our most precious resource; without it our agricultural economy cannot grow the crops and stock we need to survive, let alone compete.

But we've enjoyed such an abundance that we've taken supply for granted - until now.

Moreover, we've adopted a very laissez faire attitude to our lakes and rivers and streams, allowing stock to wander and defecate in them, industrial and agrichemical wastes to pollute and silts to clog them, and foreign invaders such as didymo and grass carp to infest them.

And it's typical of our national blind spot - pure New Zealand, yeah right - that we are only just waking up to the fact we "suddenly" have a crisis on our hands.

So good on the Greens for elevating this to a major election issue. And good on most of the other parties, too, for recognising it is an issue; at least it's now on the table, which hopefully means we'll see some real action to clean up the mess.

Unfortunately, particularly in Hawke's Bay, the state of our water supply is likely to get much worse before it gets better - if it can.

No, I'm not talking climate change. I'm talking fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a recently-invented process used by oil and gas companies to exploit otherwise uneconomic or difficult deposits. Essentially, a drilling rig bores a hole and millions of gallons of water is forced down it to make the rock around the deposit fracture, creating larger cavities from which oil and gas can be more readily obtained.

Among the many hazards with this process, apart from water a cocktail of hundreds of tons of chemicals is used to aid the fracturing. These are "proprietary" so do not need to be disclosed, but activists have identified 596 substances including volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, as well as heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium and lead. Fuel comes up "wet" and must be stripped from the fracking mix which, often highly toxic, requires careful disposal. The other problem is only about half the mixture is removed; the other half stays in the ground, where it can contaminate aquifers or seep up into groundwater.

Canadian firm Tag Oil has an exploration permit covering a large swathe of land between Napier and Dannevirke and is starting seismic testing. Tag uses fracking where appropriate in shale oil deposits - and may well do so here.

National's new energy strategy is pro-oil and given local MP Craig Foss' comments that he'd seen (undisclosed) reports saying there was no problem it seems likely this controversial method could be being used in the Bay next year.

Water drawn off the aquifer is used for public water supply and irrigation, and crops on the Heretaunga Plains provide more than 40 per cent of the total New Zealand harvest.

Mr Foss and others who've been sucked in by the oil industry's greenwash might like to go along to Reading Cinema in Napier at 7pm tonight to watch the documentary Gasland.

Seeing a man lighting water running into his kitchen sink might make them think twice about the risk fracking poses for our "food bowl" of Hawke's Bay. There'll be a discussion session as well, hosted by Green MP David Clendon and Labour MP Stuart Nash.

The worst part about this scenario is that if New Zealand signs a "free trade" agreement with the US then (as most people seem not to know) we will be beholden to US law in such matters as not to be would constitute an "unfair" restraint of trade.

And thanks to former Vice-President Dick Cheney, who was CEO of Halliburton when it invented fracking, the US Energy Act 2005 exempts oil and gas firms from a raft of environmental legislation such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air and Water Acts.

In short, there'll be no comeback.

If we didn't like and stopped it, we'd be sued.

So by all means, let's embrace the Greens' call to clean up our waterways.

But let's not forget the vital ones underground.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.