Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water & Sanitation & Hygiene May -June 2017 | Page 33

Water Scarcity
benefits of treated waste water. responses in order to keep communities safe.
The experience of industrialized countries shows that even
advanced waste-water treatment technologies struggle to
address all risks. The presence of emerging pollutants and
antibiotic-resistant bacteria in waste water are known to
escape conventional waste-water treatment.
Needless to say, these contaminants are, even at low
concentrations, a serious threat to human health. We need
technologies and structured monitoring to ensure swift There is no escaping the fact that our future food will be
grown using waste water. Local communities like those
in the Mezquital Valley can only do so much to protect
themselves; regulations and government policies must be
evaluated alongside the scientific evidence for the danger
waste water can pose to human health. Only then can safe
use of waste water in agriculture stimulate sustainable
development in our water-scarce world.
New Zealand anger as pristine lakes tapped for bottled water market
Residents and greens groups demand action to stop plan
to plunder natural resources by companies that pay next to
nothing to remove water
Kiwis are growing increasingly concerned that
their pristine freshwater reserves will be exploited
by corporate multinationals Photograph: Alamy
Stock Photo
New Zealand.
A plan to extract
millions of litres
of water out
of a Unesco
world heritage
site, send it by
pipe to the coast
and ship it to
foreign markets
for bottling
has ignited a
campaign over
water resources in
An export company is proposing to collect 800m litres a
month of the “untapped” glacial waters of Lake Greaney
and Lake Minim Mere, mountainous dams that are fed by
rainfall on the Southern Alps.
The pristine water, which the company Alpine Pure calls
“untouched by man” would be pumped 20km downhill
through an underground pipeline to a reservoir at Jackson
Bay on the West Coast, where it would be processed.
From there, it would travel through a two-kilometre
pipeline laid on the seafloor to a mooring, where
100,000-tonne tanker ships would be waiting to transport
it in bulk to overseas markets in China, India and the
Middle East.
The company already has permission to extract the water
and is going through the process of getting resource
consent from the Westland District Council for the
pipeline.
Green groups are calling on the government to urgently
step in and protect the nation’s freshwater springs and
lakes, although Alpine Pure claims it is only taking a
fraction of the water that falls as rain on the Southern
Alps.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in this proposal from overseas
companies, and a couple of times we’ve started chilling the
champagne,” said Bruce Nisbet, managing director.
“Pristine water has been falling on the Southern Alps for
a million years, and it would usually be wasted by flowing
directly out to sea. The amount we want to take is very
small.”
But the plan has angered environmentalists who warn
New Zealand is giving away its most precious natural
resource for free, at a time when domestic water supplies
are increasingly subject to contamination scares.
Two weeks ago a petition signed by 15,000 people was
delivered to parliament calling for an immediate halt to
bottled water exports.
It comes amid growing anger that multinational companies
such as Coca-Cola are drawing millions of litres of water
from ancient underground aquifers for next to nothing.
The company,
which has an annual
revenue of over
$60bn, last year paid
NZ$40,000 to the
local council for the
right to extract up
to 200 cubic metres
of water a day.
Blue Spring, New Zealand Photograph: -
The majority of
New Zealand’s bottled water is drawn from Blue Spring in
Putaruru , where Coca-Cola Amatil has a bottling factory.
The spring is world-renowned for its colour and clarity,
and is classified as a natural Taonga, or treasure.
Although Blue Spring is the major supplier of New
Zealand’s bottled water industry, companies are now
looking to more remote parts of New Zealand to access
untainted water supplies, hence the push to access glacial
water from Lake Greaney and Lake Minim Mere on the
edge of the Mount Aspiring National Park.
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