Not a Typo: Chinese Company Pays NZ$526 for 146 Million Litres of Water a Year… In a Drought Zone

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/302453/bottling-battle-lands-govt-in-hot-water

There are apparently bottling plants across New Zealand, none of which pays more than a minimal fee to regional councils to cover consent application costs under the Resource Management Act. The recent sale of a swathe of land in Ashburton, where a private company will gain the right to extract 1.4 billion litres of artesian water each year from town aquifers for the next three decades, has led to protests, while it has since emerged that the Chinese company Oravida is entitled to draw up to 400,000 litres of water a day from the Otakiri aquifer until 2026, to bottle and export to China, where the market for bottled water is surging.