NZ Water: Canterbury water authority proposal gaining ground
March 15th, 2010
Proposals to create a specialist water agency to deal with pressing Canterbury water allocation issues are gaining a favourable hearing in the Beehive, with the replacement of the current Environment Canterbury councillors with commissioners and legislation already drafted to create a new kind of agency to oversee complex water allocation issues. Canterbury has the country’s most heavily allocated catchments.
John Key is closely involved in discussions, while Environment Minister Nick Smith’s confidant and Ecologic founder Guy Salmon is pushing a model which would allow water valuation to occur.
Ultimately, a dollar value will be put on Canterbury’s fresh water, of which 96% currently flows to the sea, no matter what its intended use. The review of ECan headed to the Cabinet this week and Agriculture Minister David Carter says the Govt “has to deal with the situation quite severely.” The workload of ECan continues to pile up, with a dairy-farm developer in the Mackenzie Basin, Little Ben Ltd, appealing restrictions imposed on a proposed 1400 cow farm near Lake Benmore, just north of Omarama. Its proposed effluent discharge is near the Ben Omar swamp, which an ECan consultant has labelled as one of the most important remaining wetlands in the area.
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