Why pay for a plastic fantastic when Christchurch Tap is, well, on-tap?
* For sale: 40 billion litres of Canterbury’s purest water * Second Canterbury property with water extraction rights up for sale * Elation as Ashburton council backs out of controversial water bottling deal Which is why the commercial extraction and export of New Zealand sourced pristine drinking water, without any payment of royalties, has become such a hot potato.
With it will go a lucrative water consent allowing over 120 million litres of water a month to be bottled.
That’s 50 one-litre bottles a second.
According to his office, our annual freshwater resource is 500 trillion litres, of which 10 trillion litres is extracted.
Six trillion is harvested for irrigation, over two trillion by industry, two trillion for town water supplies and half a trillion for stock water.
Bottled water in 2016 accounted for 8.7 million litres.
Nick Smith would argue it’s the proverbial drop in the bucket, but it also underscores the enormity of the planned bulk-water extractions in Belfast and South Westland.
A litre of wine, about 200".
But if the government was to embark on a clip-the-ticket regime for commercial bulk-extraction, the detail will be devilish.