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Post by Kiwi Frontline on Aug 1, 2019 17:24:35 GMT 12
NEW NATIONAL DRINKING WATER REGULATOR CONFIRMEDA new central government regulator will take over responsibility for the nation's drinking water supplies after gaps in the current system were exposed by the 2016 Havelock North drinking water contamination that poisoned hundreds and caused four deaths. Local Government and Health Ministers Nanaia Mahuta and David Clark announced the long-signalled decision to create a new regulator, which will extend drinking water regulation to a wide range of small-scale water suppliers. It will exclude individual "self-suppliers" using tank or bore water or another freshwater source. That change will create costs for a range of remote or standalone facilities, including marae and papakainga Maori community housing, prisons, schools, campgrounds and isolated community water supply systems. Decisions on possible funding assistance will be determined by the end of the year. Three waters regulation also meshes with the government's separate 'Essential Freshwater' programme, which seeks a holistic approach to the environmental regulation of all forms of fresh and salt water, and a new system for allocating access to freshwater resources. The latter will require a settlement of the long-standing and so far insoluble issue of how to recognise Maori rights and interests in freshwater that the courts have established exist under the Treaty of Waitangi..... www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1907/S00189/new-national-drinking-water-regulator-confirmed.htm
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