Ten different corporations have now queued up to suck a total of five billion litres of pristine Hawke’s Bay water every year -- essentially for free.

Residents are furious that they seem to be losing control of their drinking water -- and the aquifers are declining at an alarming rate. It’s not just going overseas either. 5,000 people in nearby Havelock North were stuck with contaminated drinking water and many ended up buying back their own water from corporations that got it for nothing.

There is no way corporations should be allowed to plunder irreplaceable water supplies to sell overseas at an enormous profit while New Zealanders watch their aquifers dry up -- or worse, fall ill because they can’t drink their tap water.

Will you join us in calling for a moratorium on bottled water corporations in Hawke’s Bay before it’s too late?

The call has already begun. Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule has joined calls from some local conservancy groups to halt bottling in the region until water levels return to normal. This isn’t rocket science: when a corporation takes an essential resource, pays nothing for it, and then turns around and sells it at an enormous profit, that’s not job creation -- that’s theft.

No one has fought corporate water theft across the globe like SumOfUs. We made front-page news in Canada when Nestlé was taking public water for pennies a gallon and forced the government to re-write its water legislation. And of course we won a stunning victory in Canterbury Plains when 40,000 of us forced Ashburton District Council to oppose the corporate buyout of its water.

Once we lose our water, it won’t come back. Tell the Hawke’s Bay regional council to implement for a moratorium on bottled water corps now.

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