This article is from April this year but highlights the little known secrets of the bottled water industry. A world wide issue now, the human right we do or don’t have to water (Nestlé says no water isn’t a human entitlement or right – unless you’re Nestlé of course then you can take all the water you want or your obliging DC grants a consent for, then sell it off abroad for obscene profit). A good book to read on this topic is Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. Ashburton of course won out by standing up and fighting so the decision was abandoned to sell their water. This is why we need to keep standing up and speaking up. They are selling everything that isn’t nailed down as the saying goes.
EnvirowatchRangitikei

NZ’s water has been quietly sold off by global giants for years

The bottled-water giants who are taking our water

The sale of the Ashburton District Council’s Lot 9, which comes with resource consent to bottle 1.4 billion litres of artesian water each year, caused outrage – but the global beverage giants have been quietly bottling New Zealand’s water for years CHARLIE MITCHELL reports.

Along a quiet, dusty road near rural Tai Tapu lies a nondescript water bottling-plant once backed by billionaires.

It’s a corrugated iron structure, indistinguishable from the hay sheds scattered across the Canterbury Plains.

Kiwaii Water – made in NZ, but sold in US.

There is nothing to suggest it is connected to Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Americans with a fortune of about $6 billion.

It is one of the world’s largest bottled water brands, said to be the drinking water of choice for many celebrities, including United States President Barack Obama.

The water bottled there was sold under the SpringFresh brand within New Zealand. The plant was sold to Naturally Pure NZ in 2013.