Our water, it needs to be saved!

A two metre high cairn of river stones was recently built by a crowd of hundreds in Cathedral Square. Blessed by the Bishop of Christchurch, it symbolised public unease about the Government’s replacement of our elected regional councillors with appointed commissioners, and the threat this means to our water.

On 24 June, these commissioners set the rates and signed off Environment Canterbury’s $141 million budget for 2010/11. We are now expected to contribute $78 million in rates with no voice at the council table in deciding the level of rates or the priorities for expenditure and work programmes. This ignores the fundamental democratic principle of “no taxation without representation.”

Axing regional democracy was a sledgehammer response when the Government's Creech review found no fault with ECan’s work in co-ordinating public transport (the biggest budget item), managing natural hazards to protect communities from flooding, pest management, or dramatically improving the city’s winter time air quality.

While the Government lambasted ECan for lacking an operative regional plan for water, 19 years after their own Resource Management Act became law, there is still no operative national policy statement on water and few national environmental standards. Progress here by central government, and a return to regional democracy before 2013 would be welcome.