Two anti-fluoridation groups have been ordered to pay more than $40,000 after their failed bid to prevent a council from re-commencing fluoridation of its water supply.
The groups, Fluoride Action Network (NZ) Inc. and New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science, failed earlier this year in an urgent application for judicial review proceedings seeking to prevent the re-fluoridation of Hastings’ urban water supply.
Justice Dale La Hood dismissed the application and awarded costs to the respondents, who were listed as the council, the Director-General of Health and the Attorney-General.
Hastings water was fluoridated from 1954 until the Havelock North water crisis in 2016, when the system for adding fluoride was used to introduce chlorine instead.
The Council put fluoridation to referendum in 2013 with 63.5% of respondents in favour and just 36.5% opposed to fluoridation.
Hastings was one of 14 councils directed by the then Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield to fluoridate their water in July 2022.
After losing their application, the groups said there shouldn’t be a costs order.
They argued, among other things, that the proceeding was of public interest, and that there was “considerable public importance in access to drinking water free from contamination through fluoridation”.
Justice La Hood did not think so, and instead agreed with submissions made by the Director-General of Health and the Attorney-General, who said “while the applicants clearly consider they are acting in a public interest, in reality the case reflected the special interests of their members”.
“The proceeding was effectively another vehicle for groups that oppose fluoridation to challenge the Director-General’s directions to local authorities to fluoridate their water supplies and to challenge the fluoridation of water in New Zealand more generally,” the judge said.
He noted that the Director-General’s directions and the Bill of Rights consistency of water fluoridation were already subject to ongoing legal challenge, including awaiting the determination of the Court of Appeal.
He said the issues relating to justification of water fluoridation had already been raised and dismissed by the courts at all levels and that Parliament had explicitly endorsed water fluoridation as a public health measure.
“Moreover, as I noted in the substantive decision, there is a long history of, and a strong democratic mandate for, water fluoridation in the Hastings District,” he said.
He said the anti-fluoride groups evidence and submissions had been unsatisfactory and reinforced that their claim “was about advancing the special interests of its member rather than the wider public interest”.
The groups were ordered to pay the council’s costs of $20,470.40, and the Director-General of Health and the Attorney-General’s costs of $20,566.05.
Original article online at: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350337489/anti-fluoridation-groups-ordered-pay-40k-costs-lost-case