Delahunty Catherine: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 14 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10604. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]12.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Is he concerned that pure fresh drinking water could be bottled for sale from the Canterbury region where the water that the locals have to drink has been described as a “ticking time bomb” by the Canterbury District Health Board medical officer of health?Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): No firstly because the member only half quotes the medical officer of health’s comments about nitrate levels; secondly because the Government’s freshwater programme is for the first time putting limits on nitrate pollution in Canterbury through the work of the commissioners at Environment Canterbury and the Government’s national policy statement; and thirdly note that of the 325 wells that were tested in 2004 none of them was in Christchurch or Waimakariri where the bulk of the Canterbury population lives.Catherine Delahunty: Does it make any sense to use water from the over-allocated and polluted Hakatere River to refill the aquifer because we are selling off the aquifer’s clean water?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I note that by international standards Canterbury actually has incredibly clean water. There are areas where there are nitrate issues and they are being addressed by the challenging work of the commissioners. In respect of the bottled water that is being exported much of that is from deep wells that have incredibly pure water-testing results.Scott Simpson: What proportion of New Zealand’s total water resource is taken by the bottled water industry and why has he rejected calls for a moratorium on the export of bottled water?Mr SPEAKER: Either of those two supplementary questions can be answered.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I will certainly cover the latter part. Proposals for a moratorium on bottled water given that it makes up only 0.004 percent of New Zealand’s water volume are about as sensible as pretending that you would solve Auckland’s transport problem by banning bicycles or—to be more mathematically correct—tricycles.Catherine Delahunty: If there is so much water available in New Zealand why have Ashburton locals been advised by the same council to which he is selling the consent to bottle 40 billion litres of water to practise water conservation throughout the year?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Because there is a fundamental point that the member seems to miss. That is there is a big difference between the 500 trillion litres of water that New Zealand has each year in natural water bodies as compared with the limits that individual councils have on their water infrastructure—and that is a big difference. Perhaps if the member supported more water infrastructure then we would have more water available for irrigation and town water supplies.Catherine Delahunty: How will the Government support rural Cantabrians whose water is so badly polluted by nitrates that their unborn and formula-fed babies are at risk to access the fresh drinking water from Lot 9—the lot that has been sold to a water-bottling company?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would urge the member to actually refer to the actual test results. There are 325 wells that are tested for nitrates. Of those there are 8 percent that have concerning levels and they are actually in areas where there is a very small population so 95-plus percent of people in Canterbury have levels of water quality that are by international standards excellent. The second thing that I would ask the member to do is to support the Government’s work around the national policy statement and the work of commissioners who are actually finally getting on and doing something about the water quality issues in Canterbury.