Remember how Auckland’s drinking water supplier Watercare applied to take water from the Waikato River?
You’d think supplying 1.6 million people and 40,000 businesses with drinking water during a dry year—and the Covid crisis—would be a priority. But recent documents we uncovered show that Watercare is 113th in the queue for Waikato’s water.
What’s even more surprising is that two large dairy farms, ahead of Watercare in the queue, want to take enough water from the Waikato River to supply nearly half the population of Auckland.
One applicant has applied to take 90 million litres a day for irrigation, and the other applied to take 71 million litres a day. You can see all the applicants in line ahead of Watercare here.
In comparison, Auckland’s residents and businesses, including nearly 30,000 farmers and people living on lifestyle blocks, use about 400 million litres of water a day.
Kiwis shouldn’t have to compete with big industrial dairying businesses to be able to get the water they need for drinking, cooking and washing. This is yet another example of the scale of the environmental impact of industrial dairying.
What happens with that water after its done its dash in those centre pivot irrigators? We’ve seen the impact that industrial dairying has on our waterways: from Lake Ellesmere to Lake Horowhenua, from the Selwyn River to the Waikato. Our fave summer swimming spots have ended up choked with slime and algae.
And as Greenpeace Executive Director Russel Norman found out, that same water can eventually end up as our drinking water. So it seems that keeping it clean – and not enabling further pollution from industrial dairying – would be in our best interest.
That’s not to mention the climate impact of industrial dairying – New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter.
