Environment and Local Govt Ministers Nick Smith and Rodney Hide need to move quickly - possibly as early as this week - to deliver a verdict on the future of the elected councilors at Environment Canterbury, after last week’s Govt-ordered investigation left the Canterbury regional body a virtual lame duck. The report makes grim reading, and was backed up by an unusually gloomy assessment of ECan’s capacity to manage the huge water issues bedevilling the country’s most heavily used water resources. Doug Martin, a highly experienced public sector management consultant and member of the review team led by former National Minister Wyatt Creech says “in my experience, I have not come across such a gap in capability” at all levels of the organisation for handling water management issues.

Canterbury water is the most heavily used in the country, accounting for 70% of all water allocated nationally, and includes half the available water storage for hydro-electricity, itself responsible for 60% to 70% of national needs. Smith and Hide are meeting ECan councillors this week, they will also meet with the Canterbury mayoral forum, whose complaints about ECan helped spark the review, and with Ngai Tahu, which has substantial freshwater interests which it is advancing also through the Land and Water Forum and the Iwi Leadership Group, which is emerging as a key influence on Maori Party and coalition Govt decisions on Treaty issues.

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Meanwhile, ECan’s chair Alec Neill - an MP in the 1990’s Bolger govt along with Creech - is warning Cantabrians not to expect an election for regional councillors this year, a clear sign the Govt is likely to heed the report and replace ECan with commissioners to try to get the region’s water issues on an even keel. Importantly, the review team has endorsed the Canterbury Water Management Strategy, a major community consultation process that ECan engaged with. Its approach is likely to inform much of whatever happens next. Whatever those next steps are, we are picking it is unlikely Cabinet will favour a new Canterbury-only body to manage water issues. With the creation of the Environmental Protection Authority, the Govt has created a structure whose role is intended to be national coordination of nationally important resources.

Smith says “this is an important long term decision about the right water structure. Is it a separate water authority, how that fits in with RMA phase two reforms, the EPA, and the Land and Water Forum process?” Nor does the focus on ECan - or the relative exoneration of the Far North District Council in a report released with the ECan review - mean other regional councils can breathe easy. Environmental Defence Society’s Gary Taylor says the report “puts all regional councils on notice they need to lift their performance and Govt is looking for improved governance in freshwater management.”

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