While municipal support is…

While municipal support is required under this proposal for water taking, the 50,000L or less exemption is deeply problematic, particularly in Central Wellington and other regions already stressed by Nestle and other users. The province also mandates growth and regions with increased water needs over the next decades will be needing water we are giving away for pennies today.

Your process fails to properly consider cumulative effects, and given the attacks on the EBR under the government's latest Omnibus Bill, the EA process has been gutted and the province fails to provide any guidance on the issue of cumulative impacts of "development". Proper funding of research and the process for determining environmental priorities needs to be articulated and dedicated to this process.

My colleagues at Save Our Water said it best: "We are still waiting for the study that will take societal and cultural values into account, including widespread opposition to the transformation of a public common good into a commodity."

It is simply unjust to commit to commodifying that which has value as a public good, as a human right in of itself, as a finite resource necessary for future generations, as a "being" in its own right that has the right to exist for its own sake (separate from its utility to commerce), and as a necessity of life for ALL beings -- human and non-human.