Three Otago bottled water consents have been defended as having an ''insignificant'' environmental impact and being a ''prudent use'' of a valuable resource.
Otago Regional Council consents manager Chris Shaw, in a memorandum circulated to councillors, outlined details of the consents.
On Tuesday last week, about 40 people attended a rally, organised by the New Zealand Water Forum, outside the council's Dunedin head office.
The rally was one of a series held throughout the country, which coincided with a 15,000 strong petition being presented to Parliament in Wellington.
The petition called on the Government to place a moratorium on the export of fresh water, and the rallies urged local councils to give priority to public access to clean water.
Otago regional councillor Michael Laws has since asked the council chairman and chief executive to tell him ''how many water consents have been granted for companies to take millions of litres of water for commercial bottling purposes'' from the Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes region.
Cr Laws said he was ''surprised'' to read in the Otago Daily Times about the company named Koha Water Ltd being given a consent to extract 236,000cu m of groundwater from an aquifer near the Dart River.
There had been a ''paradigm shift in public perception'' towards water and the environment and ''it's particularly acute in the Central Otago and Lakes district region where we have seen significant degradation of the lakes''.
A memorandum was sent to council chief executive Peter Bodeker by Mr Shaw, and circulated to councillors before yesterday's council committee meetings.
In the report, Mr Shaw said the three consents for bottled water in Otago were for JM Love, Green Ocean Group, and Koha Water Ltd.
The JM Love consent, issued in 1996, allowed the holder to take 4493cu m a year. When last inspected in 2007, the water use was for domestic purposes and irrigation of one hectare.
The Green Ocean Group consent, issued in 1998, allowed up to 87,600cu m a year to be taken.
The water taken was from a high-yielding gravel with minimum or no draw down effects.
When inspected in 2007, the water use was for small-scale bottling and domestic purposes.
The Koha Water Ltd consent, issued in 2007, allowed the consent holder to take up to 236,160cu m of water per year, from gravels close to the Dart River.
This was equivalent to the water used by a small irrigated farm, but the consent holder had advised last year that consent had not been used. It would expire in 2019 unless it had been used, or an extension sought.
Mr Shaw's report noted that a litre of milk required about 1000 litres of water to produce, and a kilogram of beef required about 15,400 litres of water.
The value of the ''raw water'' was about $2 per litre for bottled water and $0.002 per litre for milk, he said.
