Brian Rudman: Let's splash out on a few fountains

People enjoying the fountain at Mission Bay. Photo / Doug Sherring

Fonterra and its dairy farmer owners have given the kids of New Zealand a very generous Christmas present with their plans to revive the free school milk programme. Could it be the nudge needed to persuade Auckland Council to resurrect something similar, the free public water fountain.

The other day, up popped a small story about the Hauraki Gulf Conservation Trust launching a project to install public water fountains at strategic points in the gulf and on Waiheke Island.

The trust's aim was to protect the gulf from the discarded plastic bottles polluting the Waitemata. New Zealanders use an average of 100 plastic bottles a head each year, said the trust, and many are ending up in our streams and waterways. The trust took its message to Auckland Council and was in luck, getting a commitment to fund and maintain two of the three initial fountains, at the Downtown ferry terminal, and Devonport and Matiatia wharves.

John Joachim, Auckland Transport's wharf facilities leader, says: "We understand the importance of keeping our wharves a sustainable environment and we want to make sure passengers have the opportunity to recycle and refill their water bottles so we can help cut down on rubbish. Most wharves now have new drinking fountains installed which have taps at different heights for children, ensuring people can refill their bottle rather than chucking it away and buying a new one."

This is great news for ferry passengers, and the gulf, but what about people using the rest of the city?

We Aucklanders are rather perverse when it comes to water. We promote ourselves as being the only city built alongside three great harbours. We're proud of a fresh water supply that is, with the help of the Waikato pipeline, plentiful and as clean as anything out of a bottle. But instead of celebrating our good fortune and our infrastructural expertise as the Romans did with their great aqueducts and grand fountains, we hide our "pureA" water away in sunken pipes, and out in public drink expensive bottled stuff instead.

We did try a grand fountain once, when Queen Elizabeth Square was created back in 1980, but like so much about that space, the fountain was not a triumph, mainly because the gales blasting through the place guaranteed fountain-gazing could be a dampening pastime. Other decorative water displays have been half hearted. The long-gone Mountain Fountain in Aotea Square, for example, only dribbled.

As for drinking fountains which are a feature of liveable cities like Melbourne and London, Auckland seems oddly bereft. If you have a magnifying glass there is one, hidden away in a corner of the newly upgraded Aotea Square. On Friday, it was flanked on one side by an ugly sandwich board, advertising donuts, which if not against the bylaw, should be, and on the other, by two huge wheeled rubbish bins. It is so low, you'd have to be a child or a gymnast to be able to bend down far enough to catch the jet of water. That's if the whiff from the bins didn't put you off.

Over the past year or two, tens of millions of dollars have been spent on converting streets into shared spaces. On Friday I wandered down Elliott and Darby Sts and across to Fort Lane and its neighbouring spaces. No expense has been spared on the furnishings, benches, rubbish bins, shade trees, everything you might need, except water. Not a babbling bubbling pool anywhere, nor a place to squirt Auckland's finest into your mouth for free. Queen St is the same, the only free flowing water last week coming from above, dripping down your neck courtesy of blocked veranda gutters.

The regional parks claim to have them, one advertisement directing the thirsty to go, "next to the toilets". The Auckland Museum does not, its guideline for school parties is emphatic. "There are no drinking fountains. Bring water/drink bottles to use on breaks."

The council's tourism and economic development arm, Ateed, is seeking to double its annual promotion budget to $35 million by 2019. Is it too much to hope that within this wishlist, there's a penny or two for splashing a bit of free water around?