Last year, NZ Pure Blue tried to drain the Ashburton River dry to bottle up water to sell for a huge profit. Luckily, SumOfUs members like you stepped in and stopped the deal. But now, the mysterious company has its sights on Putaruru's Blue Spring in the Waihou River and we need your help again.
NZ Pure Blue wants to build 'the largest production water bottling plant in the southern hemisphere' on Putaruru's precious Blue Spring. If built, the company will ship 2.5 billion litres a year from one of the world's purest springs 100% offshore.
But it wasn't counting on us. Close to 50,000 of us have called on the Waikato Regional Council to stop this deal.
And we can stop NZ Pure Blue again. Immediately after we showed up with our friends at ActionStation to the Ashburton Council meeting arming signatures from more than thirty thousand Kiwis, the council killed the deal immediately. We are gearing up to crash the Waikato Council if enough Kiwi’s chip in.
Can you chip in to stop this dodgy water sale today?
In New Zealand, there aren’t royalty laws like there are for oil and gas — even gravel has them — even though water is our most precious and valuable resource. Because of the lack of regulations, we don’t even know how much NZ Pure Blue will pay for some of the purest water in the world.
What we do know it won’t be anything close to what it’s worth. This is why we have to raise our voice about this deal. And you can help us get our message to Waikato Regional Council hears us loud and clear by chipping in.
Please chip in to stop NZ Pure Blue from sucking Putaruru’s Blue Spring dry.
No one has fought corporate water theft across the globe like SumOfUs. We made front-page news in British Columbia, Canada when Nestlé was taking public water for pennies a gallon and forced the government to re-write its water legislation. After a quarter million of us denounced another water grab in the United States, we earned Oregon a public review. And time and time again, we have supported local groups working in the province of Ontario in Canada, and Michigan and California to stop water deals.
And we stop NZ Pure Blue before, at Ashburton, so we know, if enough of us raise our voice here, you better believe we can stop this sale.
Will you chip in to protect the Waihou River?
More information
NZ Herald. 27 June 2017.
The Guardian. 27 March 2017.