This Post began life as a comment on Toms post ringing alarm bells on the continuing Water Wars.

Back in the 1950s My family owned almost four thousand acres of foothills farming land freehold. A quite well waterd block in the main with running stream water on both boundaries of an elongated block, plus smaller streams spring fed over the six miles long property on a range of hills.
A neighbour with around a mile of shared boundary asked my Dad if he could take a one inch diameter steel pipe from the boundary stream a mile upstream from the shared boundary for stock water all settled without a lawyer on a hand shake.
That Neighbour we will call George then installed a headworks and a take, no dramas, for the lower level areas of his four thousand acres.
A few years later he again approached my dad for another one inch take further upstream to provide reliable stock water for the remainder of his block that had minimal natural water especially in summer. He had already built a million gallon (in excess of three acre feet) dam.
George had by then subdivided his four thousand acres into five 800 acre lots for five sons, and as events eventuated they built houses and without reference connected to the piped mountain stream stock water as “Domestic supply”. Of course human nature being involved only one of those farms remains in Georges family and a subsequent new neighbour suddenly wanted to formalise his water share so it is easy to imagine the conniptions faced by my brother occupying our homelands.
It became a nightmare with this unscrupulous neighbour, armed with a QC, wanting not just to formalise a water right but began insisting my Bro fence stock away from any and all potential water sources of near thousand acres of catchment for his donated water.
Eventually reason ended the at times acrimonious argument over water given away on a handshake and my brothers legal bills that had by settlement approached 50k were settled at no cost to him. Now it will all begin again thanks to mentally deficient Parliamentarians intent on solving problems they create but do not actually exist

As stated earlier elsewhere swmbo and I have lived on rainwater for much of our sixty years and only relied on settling and biannual tank cleaning without incident. A fellow Firefighter in Akaroa who was an employee of Christchurch council water, was appalled when in response to his question, the water for our new build above Akaroa would rely on rain water. How will you make it “safe” he asked.
Now paying Selwyn District for our water every six months is somewhat chagrinning to be fair.

Justified by an over the top response to a dopy officia/sl from the Hastings District Council army of Hi Viz clad morons who permitted a waste tanker driver to dump a load of human excrement contaminated waste water on vacant land where it could by gravity enter an unsealed well head near Havelock North, we all must endure the ongoing nonsense.
That egregious mistake causing a gastro attack that all were informed led to a death when it was never divulged afaik if the contaminated water actually caused the death (remembering the gunshot victim who on post mortem investigation was found to have had contact with the Wu Flu virus became a Covid fatality), the Nation has indulged in a totally unnecessary regime, too often fuelled by the desires of certain part native elites to grasp control of all water for financial gain, the battles we were constantly berated to be ended continue unabated.

These two octogenarians are living proof simple efforts to gather water do not need the “Crat Army” to intrude on our basic life choices.
As an aside I do wonder if the seemingly increased claims of children suffering allergy problems might have a direct connection to the modern child avoiding all the dangers wel indulged in with dirt, worms and other contacts that built immunity for our developing lives.