Bob Edlin: What’s The Future Of Water?

That profoundly critical question was the headline on a local authority’s news release posted on the Scoop website.

The short answer – it seems at first blush – is that there will be plenty of it.

PoO makes that observation on the strength of another headline on the Scoop website:

End Of Eternal Ice: Many Glaciers Will Not Survive This Century, Climate Scientists Say

That steered us to a report from the United Nations which advised us:

Point of Order: Dogs decision delayed.....

......but the horse-racing industry looks like a good bet (at least for now) after TAB’s competitors are nobbled

Money was profusely flowing or generously being committed in a raft of ministerial announcements and speeches over the past 24 hours.

If we tallied all the dollar signs in all the new press statements on the government’s official website, billions would be involved.

But in some cases, the ministers didn’t bother to tell the public how much their projects are costing. Maybe they don’t know.

Point of Order: We try again to get the measure of mauri and how to determine when $4.95 million of public funding has restored it

The concept of “mauri” can be mystifying but we should strive to understand it – and learn how to measure it – in an era when central and local governments are launching programmes to restore it.

Without knowing how to measure it, governments and councils – and taxpayers and ratepayers – can’t know if the public money spent on restoration projects has delivered the goods. Or restored the mauri.

Mike Butler: Wrecked rivers, iwi demands

Rapid changes in land use leading to polluted water and wrecked rivers have prompted a new book titled Water Quality and Ownership. Author Bill Benfield is a Christchurch architect and vineyard owner who, as a keen angler from an early age, has witnessed the progressive degradation of water quality in rivers and streams.

How has this happened? Benfield goes back to the Muldoon “think big” projects of the early 1980s that produced cheap nitrogen fertiliser from natural gas which enabled greater use of fertiliser.

Mike Butler: Special water deal for iwi persists

A vague pivotal concept known as “Te Mana o te Wai” and a special deal for iwi featured in Environment Minister Nick Smith’s “Next steps for fresh water” presentation in Napier last night.

Dr Smith’s detailed presentation on environmental concerns about the economic use of, iwi rights and interests to, and the funding of fresh water improvement, ensured iwi representatives and treaty policy critics exercised restraint when asking questions.

Mike Butler: Gisborne resource co-governance

The Gisborne District Council became latest local authority to adopt a co-governance arrangement with local tribe Ngati Porou on notified resource consent applications, on planning documents, and on private plan changes.

The agreement between Te Runanganui o Ngati Porou, a trustee company, and the Gisborne District Council, passed at a council meeting October 8, includes heavily criticised aspects of co-governance involving tribal appointees with full voting rights.

Viv Forbes from Australia: Water rules the Weather - Carbon Dioxide is a Climate Pygmy

Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is blamed for every weather emergency, but as a weather maker, water is far more important.

Without water, Earth’s weather would be dramatically different. We would have no clouds, no rain or snow, no rain or hail storms, no hurricanes, no seas, rivers, lakes or ice sheets – just cold, cloudless nights and hot, clear days with dry winds and fierce dust storms; a dead planet like Mars.

Gerry Eckhoff: Maori Claim to Water

The claim by some Maori for ownership of freshwater cannot stand – regardless of any Waitangi tribunal ruling in their favour. Maori especially understand the principle of communal ownership and that nobody owns an un-alienated public resource that is shared “in common”. Even feral pigs or deer on private or public land are not “owned” until the hunter actually bags the animal. Ownership then applies to the resource (pig/deer/water) but not unless or until the point of “capture”.

Water is a prime example of an un-owned, uncontrolled public asset, held “in common” until the point of “capture” whether by a dam, diversion race, water pipe or some other device that denotes possession.

Gerry Eckhoff: Council Judgments

It appears to be drawing a long bow to compare a 1923 court decision from the Kings Bench in the UK to the hearing of the Otago Regional Councils plan change 6C - Water.

The 1923 decision gave rise to Lord Chief Justice Hewart’s ruling – ‘that justice should appear to be done’ and that no one can sit in judgment in their own cause. The mere appearance of bias by those sitting in judgment is sufficient to overturn a judicial decision as happened in 1923 where a deputy clerk to the Kings bench was also a member of a firm of solicitors acting in a civil claim before the Justices. An appeal against conviction was upheld on the basis of a perception of bias.

Gerry Eckhoff: The Hot Issue of Fresh Water

The debate over the use of fresh water, as is a tradition in this country, is controlled by those who generally speaking have never left their desk but read copious quantities of reports by others whose hands on knowledge of this subject is determined by their proximately to the office water cooler.

A case in point was a recent article by Rod Oram in the Sunday Star Times. Orams article thundered that we must show courage if –quote “we are to stand chance of using this precious resource sustainably.” As most of the “precious” fresh water currently flows out to sea, it is difficult to understand Orams assertion of our need for “sustainable” use. It would seem that he and others of his race believe in “sustainable waste” of this “precious” resource called fresh water by insisting that sustainable flows reach the coastal water to be totally lost for productive use.