The government’s policy for controlling groundwater abstraction is based on metering of registered boreholes and installing tracking devices on water bowsers to “know where the bowsers are being loaded with water, where the water is delivered, and the volumes involved” (The Times, November 16, 2009).

It’s been two years since the Ministry for Resources announced that the water bowsers will be tracked but as far as I know these bowsers are still carrying on their business of pumping and selling public (read as mine and yours) water, untracked. And it’s also been a year since all registered boreholes were to be metered (end of 2010). To date, a mere 150 of more than 7,500 registered boreholes have been metered. So until now the relentless extraction of approximately 40,000 litres a minute of public water for free by private water suppliers is still going on largely unchecked.

That is not all. The considerable expense in bowser-tracking devices and in water meters will not achieve the government’s ultimate aim of getting an accurate picture of what’s being pumped up from our aquifers. Why? Because neither the sophisticated tracking devices on bowsers nor the water meters on registered boreholes will give us an idea of what is being pumped up by the (thousands?) of unregistered boreholes – which I consider to be the bigger threat to the sustainability of our aquifers than the registered ones.

There are a number of borehole drilling rigs in the country but nobody has any idea what they are drilling. For all I know, a good number of them may be going about their business of drilling boreholes for water pumping (in basements, garages, fields) as I write. Nobody can give us a guarantee that they are not adding to the number of water-pumping boreholes in the country that has the highest borehole density in the world.

By tracking bowsers we will not be any wiser about the number and whereabouts of these unregistered boreholes, or the amount of water they are pumping because one would be stupid to transport illicit water in a bowser that is being tracked. They will continue to pump up water and use it without transporting it – in homes, industry, agriculture, animal farms, for landscaping – you name it.

So here comes my proposal. I do not have an issue with bowsers transporting water. I have an issue with the source of the water. The illegality of the process is not in the transportation of the water but the source. So if we want to curb the abuse we should be addressing the source, that is, the boreholes and, consequently, the drilling rigs.

My proposal is for the government to reconsider the tracking of bowsers project (which has not taken off anyway) and instead track all borehole drilling rigs with immediate effect. This will put a stop to the drilling of more unregistered boreholes.

Failure to address this situation will continue to accelerate the rate of loss of our groundwater resource which will deprive our children (not our grandchildren) of this source of affordable water.

I hope this proposal will be given its due consideration.