The horticulture industry is worried that Three Waters reforms will direct entities to secure the cheapest water supply for urban areas at the expense of food security.
The reforms in the Water Services Entities Bill would establish four water service entities that will take fresh water, wastewater and stormwater functions off local government. It recently came under fire from the auditor-general for being weak on public accountability.
Horticulture NZ spokesperson Michelle Sands told Parliament’s finance and expenditure committee that most horticulture is situated near urban areas and therefore shares water catchments with urban communities.
In its written submission, Horticulture NZ says over 80% of vegetable production is consumed in NZ, with much of the export crop heading for the Pacific Islands. Many fruit crops are also grown for domestic consumption.
It wants consideration of domestic food security to be explicitly written into the new law.
National MP Andrew Bayly, whose electorate includes the key horticulture area of Pukekohe, asked Sands whether the sector receives sufficient priority in water allocation.
Sands said she is concerned the bill “directs the water entities to pursue the cheapest water for their functions but without considering the wider social/economic costs that might be associated with it”.
She highlighted the existing tension with Auckland’s Watercare holding onto a consent to draw from the Kaawa aquifer in case of drought – the same source that Pukekohe’s growers rely on.
Read: Three Waters reforms under fire from auditor-general
She said in the past entities like Watercare had to consider the wider impact of where they were taking their water from, but she thinks the bill will result in them giving such impacts less consideration.
She said the new water storage dam at Mataawi, near Kaikohe in Northland, is a good example of wider impacts being considered. It will supply both the local town and an expanding horticulture industry.
“It’s an approach of collaboration and the costs being shared between the primary sector, and municipals.”
Southland MP Joseph Mooney said his electorate experienced significant drought this year and asked what the bill would do to increase water storage in the face of climate change.
Sands said the bill lacks a requirement for entities to consider water storage as well as schemes for recharging aquifers and augmenting streams that are “absolutely critical” to both urban communities and maintaining rural production.
She said there are wider benefits that could be achieved if the entities are required to collaborate with rural communities rather than “taking priority to have the cheapest, deep groundwater that’s reliable, that’s currently used by other people, and to force the costs of storage, augmentation and adaptation onto rural users”.
