Save Our Wai - High Court Appeal

Save Our Wai - High Court Appeal

Project 2019-12-19 14:44:54 +1300

New Zealand: The plastic creation nation. Is this our future? 

Sustainable Otakiri needs to raise $35,000 by January 20th, 2020 or it may have to leave any ambitions of a Court appeal against Cresswell NZ (a Chinese-owned subsidiary company) to save our precious water resource for future generations.

Please give us a chance to stop the bottling and STOP THE PLASTIC! PLEDGE or DONATE Direct (Save Our Water and Environment 06 0489 0754608 30). THANK YOU!

This proposal would be disastrous for NZ and our region. The factory intends to: 

• Take 1.1 million m3 of deep-aquifer water/year from an aquifer that was previously classified as over-allocated.
• Discharge up to 450m3 per day of high-phosphorus process water to a local stream flowing into the Tarawera River. 
• Produce 6m3 of compressed plastic waste daily, from reject bottles and packaging.
• Export the majority of this bottled water to China.
• Produce 2,451,960 up to 3.7million bottles (of various sizes) each day. That's up to 1.35 billion a year!
• Create 202 truck and trailer journeys from Tauranga to Otakiri (and associated emissions) each day - that's one truck every three minutes to the Port of Tauranga.
• Set a dangerous new precedent nationwide for allowable consent creep without public consultation, given this expansion is 20 and in some areas 50 fold in upscale.

We can win this! Minister Eugenie Sage said she was powerless to stop this, but the community isn't! Sustainable Otakiri has appealed the land use consent in the Environment Court and we have grounds to take this fight to the High Court after Commissioner Kernohan echoed that projects like these industrial scale developments should be Publicly Notified. If it is successful, the Court's ruling will prevent Cresswell building the plant and buying the land without seeking full public consultation, and I'm sure we will all have a lot to say!

The Society has a strongly arguable case that the application should be declined. Sustainable Otakiri has seen the legal advice, discussed with various support groups and agrees that the case needs to be heard by the High Court. The Courts are very strict on how long you have to raise an appeal to the High Court - it is just a matter of weeks. If the Society can't raise $35,000 by the 20th of January then it will have to cancel its plans to appeal. Sustainable Otakiri has twice applied to the government's legal assistance fund and we have been turned down both times. We need your help!

Who are we? Sustainable Otakiri Incorporated is the society behind the Save Our Wai movement. Some close associations we have are with Aotearoa Water Action (Awa), Greater Tauranga and many more amazing organisations.

If you are opposed to 3.7million new, single use plastic bottles being produced in our region every single day (where they produced none before) and shipped overseas to China - Please donate.

If you think that companies who apply to produce massive quantities of plastic should be required to take financial responsibility for the whole life of what they produce - Please donate. 

If you're opposed to the public not being consulted on the actual long term affects of Industrial scale developments and are appalled you're not being given the opportunity to decide if this is the NZ you want - Please donate.

If you're worried what sort of precedent this application sets when a 20-50 fold increase in a business's size can occur like the massive increase in trucking this would allow (without consultation) into Tauranga - Please donate.

If you believe that water is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most precious resources and should be protected from overseas corporate greed - Please donate.

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