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National | Water

Former TV personality Tamati Coffey backs water petition

There's a petition calling for the government to pass urgent legislation to charge bottling water plants fairly for water extraction. The hashtag #waterfightnz, used to portray this issue is gaining momentum on social media.

After uploaded a post on Facebook regarding water being taken from New Zealand, former television personality Tamati Coffey has been inundated with responses.  He is now backing a petition calling for urgent legislation to charge bottling water plants correctly for the water they extract from New Zealand.

“We've had one and a half thousand people sign our petition so far, that's on change.org and there are plenty of comments as well and I've been reading every single comment and taking everything on board as well” says Coffey.

In the Bay of Plenty, Oravida is one of the 74 water bottling plants in New Zealand extracting water to sell overseas.  Coffey says these companies are being charged next to nothing.

“All it takes for you to be able to get one of these permits is you need to pay a complacence cost to your territorial authority so to the regional council.  You pay a small fee something like $528 I think what the local one at Otakiri had to pay and then from that they are able to take all the water that they want,” he says.

Tamati Coffey hopes the petition will reach 10,000 signatures within the next two weeks.

Te Kāea reporter Mere Mclean has more on this tonight at 5:30pm.