Two Christchurch bottling plants have permission to take 8.8 billion litres of water a year. It's sparked a legal fight.

Campaigners are taking legal action against the regional council for allowing bottling companies to take billions of litres of water from underground Christchurch aquifers.

Aotearoa Water Action (AWA) believes Environment Canterbury (ECan) "bent the law" by letting two firms, Cloud Ocean Water and Rapaki Natural Resources, to siphon off water from neighbouring bottling plants in Belfast.

AWA spokesman Peter Richardson said the group is taking legal proceedings against all three groups in an attempt to overturn the consents.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF The site of a water bottling plant in Christchurch, which used to home the Kaputone Wool Scour.

He said: "We believe we have a very strong case. We think ECan has bent the law to enable these consents to be granted.

"The council [ECan] is allowing Christchurch's water security to be put at risk for the benefit of a few corporations. They simply don't have the evidence to show that this level of extraction is sustainable or safe."

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The two bottling companies have permission to take 8.8 billion litres of water a year – the equivalent of more than 24 million litres a day – but only have to pay a pittance for the privilege.

Due to the Government's position that no-one owns water, it cannot be priced, allowing companies to take and export water at negligible cost.

Between them the companies have permission to bottle water from nine bores across the sites, one a former Silver Fern Farms and the other the old Kaputone wool scour, the latter owned by Cloud Ocean Water, though bottling has not yet commenced from any.

A tenth bore, which Stuff reported in December the China-owned Cloud Ocean Water had consent to drill, was completed last month and is being "surged" for testing, though ECan is yet to receive an application to bottle water from it.

Cloud Ocean Water is also looking to expand its workforce, currently advertising for 30 truck and warehouse drivers and a machine operator amid a "period of rapid growth" in Christchurch.

The city council has concerns the new bore – which at 186 metres is more than five times deeper than any of the others – could take water from the same aquifer as wells used for the city's drinking water.

The council raised its doubts twice with ECan in July, and a document from December revealed officials are adamant no bottling should take place before tests are carried out.

It said: "It is critical that well interference testing is undertaken prior to any consent being granted for a new 'take' from the new well, even though this 'replaces' the take from the existing shallow well.

"City council staff consider that a consent to take water should not be granted until [they] have had the opportunity to review and get advice on the results of well interference testing."

AWA argues groundwater in the area where the two plants are is already fully allocated, and that previous consents for the companies originally on the sites, dating back around 20 years, should not have been amended and amalgamated in the way they have been to allow for bottling.

Richardson said: "Our view is that [the process] has no basis whatsoever in law, it's just a device that was thought up by ECan to enable them to grant these consents.

"Because they didn't treat it as they should have treated it – as an application to take and use water – ECan took the view that they weren't required to have regard to any of the environmental effects generated by a take of water.

"They simply assumed that because there was an existing right to take water, albeit for a different purpose, they weren't required to consider these effects. We think that's completely wrong."

Richardson said ECan and the two bottling firms have been notified that legal action is being taken against them.

ECan lawyer Catherine Schache said the council would not comment as the issue has been filed with the courts, but said they were "confident in our decision-making processes".

A Cloud Ocean Water spokeswoman said the company is yet to receive any notice of legal proceedings against it, but that it has "followed due process" over applications for resource consents.

Stuff was unable to contact representatives from Rapaki Natural Resources.