Conservationists and recreational users are staking out the Hurunui River irrigation scheme as a battleground on which the future of the Govt’s collaborative approach to freshwater management either succeeds or fails. There was little surprise when legislation passed under Parliamentary urgency before Easter, sacked the Environment Canterbury regional councillors. But environmental, conservation and recreational groups with interests in freshwater management generally, and Canterbury in particular, were deeply shocked by the inclusion of clauses allowing major changes to the operation of Water Conservation Orders. The change is likened to changing the Schedule 4 status of minerally prospective conservation lands currently protected from mining under the Crown Minerals Act without any of the consultation occurring on the issue.

Cabinet briefing papers from MAF and the MED, released under the Official Information Act to Forest & Bird, show how urgently the Govt is moving to increase the productive capacity of Canterbury farmland through much greater access to stored water. Many of the 150 pages of documents dwell on the delays implied by various options, and advice centres on creating law and other changes to accelerate the commencement of irrigation schemes already on the books.

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NZ Energy & Environment Business Week believes the changes were opposed by Environment Minister Nick Smith, but the combined influence of MAF and MED – both agencies have long fretted about the way WCOs can lock up options for water use – and the enthusiasm of their Ministers David Carter and Gerry Brownlee, were too powerful to overcome. Many of the briefings released were addressed to John Key, who has been nominating increased water storage as a key part of the Govt’s plan to raise NZ’s trend rate of economic growth.

Ironically, the treatment of WCO’s in the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Act may end up forcing compromise. It could even create delay, because of its impact on the Govt’s attempt at a collaborative approach to new water policy through the Land and Water Forum. The forum’s convenor, retired diplomat Alistair Bisley, made a cautious statement saying the forum continues to operate. Bisley says “Nobody has left,” although Environmental Defence Society head Gary Taylor says “it had better not happen again.” The WCO initiative clearly gives the balance of power to pro-development interests and has cost Fish & Game tens of thousands of dollars because it effectively cancels the current Hurunui WCO, while leaving intact the overlapping resource consent applications lodged by the scheme’s promoters. F&G will have to start again.

The conservation lobby says a collaborative process for the Hurunui is vital if goodwill is to be restored. This should include the potential to bring water to the area from other irrigation schemes to the south. This would allow Hurunui farmland access to irrigation while leaving the river itself to flow freely. The importance the Govt is attaching to NZ’s natural endowment of water cannot be under-estimated. It is appearing now in key Ministers’ speeches as one of the country’s few differentiating sources of global competitiveness.

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