The recent furore over bottling plants and how much companies would pay should open more discussion on whether all water-using sectors should pay and how much they should paying, Fraser, a Wellington consultant, said.
New Zealand First has called for all water users to pay 10c a litre on water used, something the Government dismissed as being unaffordable to big water-using sectors like dairying.
“But in their own way they have raised an issue and it is something the Green Party also touched on before the last election, to charge all users of water as a tax – the idea was there but its execution was not as good as it needed to be,” Fraser said.
He agreed, however, 10c a litre was unaffordable for most sectors and proposed a price closer to 10c a cubic metre (1000 litres).
Prime Minister Bill English has said a tax or charge on water needed a “lot of work” and was not something that was going to change before the election.
But there did appear to be more consideration about the possibility of charging.
English said there was a need to work through the existing complexities of water with its history of first-in-first-served but the Government had the opportunity to change who paid for what with respect to water.
But Fraser maintained the Government would shy away from acknowledging the need for a charge, for fear of creating a Maori-led debate on ownership that would easily overshadow the seabed and foreshore debate.
“I think it could yet prove a sleeper issue for this year’s election.
“The Government is doing much of what we could call ‘active inactivity’– being seen to do a lot but not a lot right now. Look at how the water quality issue has been addressed but pushed out 30 years.”
Fraser described it as “appallingly stupid” to virtually give away water in the manner we do when its abundance was becoming more debatable.
“It would be like Saudi Arabia giving away its oil just because it has a lot of it.”
It was not sufficient for English to simply dismiss the issue as being “too complicated”.
“We had an issue under the Muldoon government where inshore fisheries were being pillaged and we dealt with that by starting the quota system. We stopped years of practice with a new regime. That could be done with a resource like water.”
Once created the fisheries reform bought Maori fisheries claims.
Fast forward 20 years from there and the issue was radio spectrum allocation and again iwi claims were recognised, resulting in 2degrees.
“There is also an argument there. If you introduce a charge, how far do you go with it, you would have to charge everyone, not just water bottlers.”
He pointed to the Crown Mineral Estate system that charged royalties for resources mined or extracted.
“You could treat water exactly the same and the market would soon determine whether extraction is economic or not.”
But determining a charge on water would not only create iwi claim, it would also undo the Government’s efforts to increase agricultural production through its irrigation projects.
He pointed to irrigation schemes where economic modelling for farming showed irrigation with water charges simply would not be profitable for farmers.
“The proposed Wairarapa irrigation scheme never put a cost on the delivery of the water, let alone purchasing the water itself, and even at $6/kg MS. irrigated dairy was unprofitable.”
Adding in a 24-28c/cumec price for the water’s dam storage scheme required a dairy payout of $7-$10/kg MS.
“The tragedy of such a scheme is it needs dairy but dairy cannot pay for it, let alone also pay a water charge on top of it.”
He did not believe all water users had to fear a singular charge, given the spectrum of quality of water available for use.
“Not all water is the same.
The water sold from the Mount Aspiring National Park is obviously the top end but recycled Wellington sewerage water would have other applications and be priced accordingly.”
He maintained irrigation, which accounted for about 80% of NZ’s pumped water use, would be the low-hanging fruit to deal with regarding charging and smarter use would evolve, not only for irrigation but for urban use too.
“You look at Sydney, which has not increased its net water consumption since 1973, with far more smart technology used to conserve and recycle than we use here.”
Aucklanders on average used 380 litres a day each compared to Sydney consumers’ 295l.
Cost talk misses pollution issue
The debate on who pays for water and how much misses a bigger point about the impact of irrigation water use on wider reserves of water, Matamata fresh water campaigner Angus Robson says.
Robson has been a vocal critic of the Government’s plans to boost irrigation and intensive farming’s impact on nitrate levels in ground water.
He was a member of Landcorp’s environmental stakeholder group that included ecologist and vet Dr Alison Dewes, Massey University’s Dr Mike Joy and environmentalist Guy Salmon.
“To be honest, I don’t really care what is proposed to charge for water use.
“The consumptive use of water is the least of the problems. It is the amount you don’t use that is impacted by nitrates and rendered contaminated that is the concern.”
He likened it to taking a 1500 cubic metre Olympic pool and taking out 10 cumecs for irrigation then contaminating the remaining 1490 cumecs to render it unusable.
Robson has researched data to highlight his concerns about the water footprint impact in Canterbury.
Data sourced through Environment Canterbury and Canterbury Development Corporation calculated dairying’s use of water ranged from 56,000 cumecs of water (56 million litres) per tonne of milksolids produced to 625,000 cumec per tonne of milksolids.
“That is when you allow for aquifers to be recharged from within the catchment, at a nitrate level of 1ppm.
“The highest usage figure allows for this but to achieve it is impossible. It exceeds the entire region’s aquifer and river capacity by 15 times if we want to achieve the dilution levels required before that water re-enters the aquifers.”
Robson’s call to look beyond the immediate cost of water was shared by Victoria University assistant vice chancellor of sustainability Marjan van den Belt.
“I agree it is important to calculate the limits for dairy activities to stay within the carrying capacity first then discuss fair distribution of resources and finally efficient allocation through funding transfer, the basic steps in ecologic economics.”
She argued investment in ecosystems, including decommissioning farms in the wrong places, would require a long-term plan for the entire country in problem areas.
“We need to develop investment mechanisms to transition to a more sustainable, resilient and desirable outcome.”
