It is said that every drop of tap water in London has been through at least seven people.
When I flush my Hamilton toilet, I think about the poor Aucklanders who have to take Waikato river water downstream at Mercer. But it is the Waikato Regional Council that is really taking the piss. Here are the figures that I picked up from another BFD reader:
The Waikato River flow varies from a historical low of 137 cumecs up to an historical high of 788 cumecs.
Cumec is short for “cubic meter per second”. Imagine a box 1m tall, 1m long, and 1m wide. That box will hold 1000 litres. Now imagine a conveyor belt with one box passing by every second.
The Waikato Regional Council estimates the river’s average flow at Mercer is 250 cumecs. Mercer is just above the Watercare take off point for Auckland so this is the water available to Auckland. This is 250 boxes every second, 60 times per minute, for every minute of every hour. A total of 21,600,000 boxes per day.
Auckland’s proposed increase in water take is 25,000,000 litres per day, which is 25,000 cubic meters.
That is 1/864 or 0.0012 of the daily flow. That’s just over one-tenth of a single percent of the water that is lost out to sea in order to supply Auckland with drinking water to keep people alive.
It is one fifth of a single percent of the historic low flow. Even in the worst case, this cannot damage the river.
What the hell is the hold-up?
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