December 20, 2020
Court dashes hope on Otakiri water bottling
Bay of Plenty iwi Ngati Awa is disappointed at a High Court judgment knocking back its challenge to the massive expansion of a water bottling plant at Otakiri by its new Chinese owners.
Justice Ian Gault confirmed Environment Court findings that water bottling was rural processing activity, that Treaty of Waitangi and kaitiaki consideration had been taken into account, and the possibility millions of plastic bottles could end up as litter was outside the scope of the consent.
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa chief executive Leonie Simpson says the iwi put a massive effort into fighting the plan to produce up to 80,000 bottles of water an hour.
But she says whether it was New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s effort to find a foreign investor for the plant, or the various council and court hearings on Resource Management Act compliance, the Māori perspective carried little or no weight.
"When we are presenting our thinking around te mauri o te wai, te mana o te wai, te mana ki te wai, those kinds of Tikanga and kawa that can only be expressed by us because they are intrinsic to us, there is not a lot of scope in some of those proceedings for substantial recognition of what we are saying." Ms Simpson says.
She says New Zealand still has no rules covering water bottling, and the fight will continue over the industry and its effect on climate change.
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