Otakiri Mega bottling plant - The final battle

Otakiri Mega Bottling Plant - The Final Battle

Project 2021-02-07 18:06:05 +1300

Sustainable Otakiri is refusing to walk away from its David and Goliath battle against water bottling company Creswell Ltd. Cresswell is owned by Nongfu Springs, a foreign corporation that operates18 water-bottling plants across China. Sustainable Otakiri is a small group of poorly resourced but determined neighbours and activists - but we have always had a much larger team behind us!

To a large extent, the generosity of New Zealanders has funded our cases before the Environment Court and then the High Court, and because of that it doesn’t feel like our battle to quit anymore.  So if NZ can help fund the next step, we’ll just keep going. 

That next step is to get to the Court of Appeal.  We will need to raise at least $60,000 to pay legal fees and court costs so if you can help us out we’d be so grateful.

Here’s why we’re doing this…

Firstly, because Cresswell’s factory will: 

• Take 1.1 billion litres of deep-aquifer water/year. There is currently no price on our water.
• Discharge up to 4,500 litres per day of high-phosphorous process water to a local stream that flows into the already polluted Tarawera River. 
• Produce 6m³ of compressed plastic waste daily, from reject bottles and packaging.
• Export the majority of its bottled water to China.
• Produce up to 3.7 MILLION BOTTLES (of various sizes) each day. That's up to 1.35 billion plastic bottles per year!
• Create 202 truck and trailer journeys between Tauranga and Otakiri each day – that’s one truck every three minutes.

And secondly, because the recent Decisions on our case have made it easier, not harder, for future water bottling applications and we can’t just let those Decisions lie – they need to be challenged.

Finally, NZ’s water resources are wide open to exploitation by water bottling companies.  That’s because it is a new and almost wholly unregulated industry.

NZ has had a small water bottling industry for a long time now, largely supplying the domestic market (which is approximately 158 million litres annually).  However, in recent years we’ve seen applications to take much more water and export volumes have risen sharply:  in the year ending March 2017, NZ exported 28 million litres of bottled water; in 2019 that had risen to 160 million litres per year. Now, Creswell wants to export 580 million litres per year!  The impact of this proposal would be massive.

And here’s the thing, until the legislation and local and regional planning frameworks recognise and manage the adverse effects of this industry, small local volunteer organisations and Iwi groups are the only ones holding these international corporate giants at bay - through hard fought court cases.

Unfortunately, no Government policy change or moratorium can help us in this case, so we need to keep fighting and we need to create better caselaw – including ensuring the effects of plastic waste must be considered.

Please pledge if you can, but if you can’t pledge please share this page via email or social media and tell your friends and family.  We can use any help you can give us!

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