The private well and the public good
10th July 2010
The relationship between water and wealth in Mid-Canterbury is nowhere more striking than in the appearance of irrigation storage reservoirs. From the air our district looks like a water wonderland, the familiar patchwork of paddocks and shelterbelts now flecked with a new patchwork of glittering ponds, some the size of small lakes.
I assume giving up farmland to large ponds is economical for irrigators but I wonder if it is much of a leap forward in how we manage water. Do these lakes capture water that would otherwise be lost? Or do they simply gather water that was already allocated from, say, the RDR and which previously was spread through border dikes but now is sprayed onto the land by centre pivots and rotor rainers?
This gathering of water into reservoirs is a visible symbol of power in the debate over water use. It says, “this water is mine. I have harvested it, stored it and will use it as I see fit.” It privatises a resource that, when it flows in our rivers or settles in our aquifers, is a public good.
The privatisation of water is not confined to farming. The small yellow signs saying ‘private well’ that pop up on suburban lawns confer the same privilege upon the householder who thereby gives himself licence to suck up public water and throw it around with abandon.
The sustainability of these practices may be about to come under closer scrutiny. In this week’s press it was pleasing to see Ashburton Mayor Bede O’Malley encouraging us to put our names forward to join the Ashburton Zone Water Management Committee.
According to Canterbury Water, a stand-alone directorate of Environment Canterbury, the committee will work with locals to develop a wide-ranging plan for water resources in our district. Water zone facilitator Barbara Nicholas says the committee “will need to be able to deal with the complexities of water issues” to help implement the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) in Ashburton District.
On the face of it this all sounds rather jolly. One imagines a committee of farmers, householders, business people and local politicians happily weighing private interest and public good and balancing the fine equation to everybody’s advantage.
But there is something in this proposal that doesn’t stack up. Why are we now forming a committee to develop a “wide-ranging plan” for local water management? Isn’t this the purpose of the CWMS and, if not, what has been the point of all the work and politics invested in that Strategy?
The local committee’s brief is to help implement the CWMS and there is a devil of detail in that little word “help”. In fact the proposition asks more questions than it answers. What substantive role does the local committee play? Will it have the power to decide between conflicting interests in water use? How will committee members be appointed? Will it be a fair representation of all stakeholders?
It is difficult to avoid seeing the local committee as window dressing, a trickle down of power like the last few drops from the aquifer. Mr O’Malley’s endorsement of people-power raises suspicion in itself considering his role in the infamous ‘letter from the Mayors’ that caused us to lose our right to a democratically elected Environment Canterbury. He is not the only Mayor in the region who, as local government elections approach, is hurrying to prove himself a friend of democracy.
Recent events at ECan tempt the conclusion that the future of Canterbury’s water resource has been stitched up between big business and the political Right. A local committee will be, at best, a very small voice in a room filled with commissioners and corporates, both single-minded in regarding water only as a path to prosperity.
Nevertheless, we should support the local committee. Even a small voice is better than we have at present. The committee’s small voice can claim a few column-inches in the local press and may in time grow to be influential. At the very least it may become a watchdog to expose the worst practices and to move forward our collective awareness of the fragility and finiteness of our water resources.