Canterbury Water strategy will force change
September 7th, 2009
The draft Canterbury Water Management Strategy is a bold effort to settle protracted disputes over how to allocate the region’s increasingly scarce water resource, although it’s a moot point whether it will succeed while so many of the involved parties are also facing off in the courts at the same time. Assuming litigation can be replaced by consensus, there is still a high hill to climb.
Existing users will have to start paying for the water they already have rights to. This will ensure new users are not locked out by facing prices existing users don’t, to help pay for new water storage infrastructure, and to force more efficient water use.
There will be a huge push to increase and improve the use of nitrification inhibitors (NIs) on pastoral farms. Canterbury is well-suited to the use of NIs, compared with many other parts of the country. Their widespread use will be essential if more intensive land-use and cleaner groundwater are to go together. Instead of the current ad hoc system of consents to take groundwater through private bores, existing bore-owners will need to be given access to water from new or improved water storage facilities.
The plan also proposes using Lake Coleridge for storage, efficiency improvements in mid Canterbury, groundwater storage in the Central Plains, a Hurunui integration option, Lees Valley storage, Lake Tekapo water for South Canterbury, and the extension of Hunter Downs to the north.
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