Water: Tempers Fraying As Water Forum Goes Down To The Wire
July 27th, 2010
The temperature on key issues inside the Land and Water Forum is rising with only some 6 weeks to go before it must issue a report to Environment Minister Nick Smith. The forum has been an experiment in consensus-building, taking the last year to put together industrial, farming, municipal, recreational, iwi and environmental groups with interests in freshwater management, many of whom are long time traditional foes. To date, the experiment seems to have been working, and was robust enough to keep going after a serious threat of derailment when the Govt sacked Environment Canterbury Councillors and put in Commissioners because of ECan’s failure to get to grips with water management in the country’s most over-allocated catchment.
However, there are now rumblings in green groups over what they see as intransigence in the dairy sector and among would-be irrigation scheme developers to oppose the implementation of key elements of the proposal National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. Produced from a nine month board of inquiry process, and six years in gestation prior to this, the NPS is the primary instrument for guiding nationwide decision-making on freshwater issues.
Its key recommendations: prevent further allocation of water where it is over-allocated already; prevent further degradation of waterways; ensure the integrated management of land and water; and protection of the remaining 10% of NZ’s wetlands.
It now only requires Cabinet approval and gazetting by the Governor-General to come into force. While no one expected Smith to make a decision on the NPS until after the LWF’s report, due at the end of August, environmental groups are deeply concerned it will be watered down to meet aspirations, particularly in the dairy industry, to bring land into use unsuited to dairying without major irrigation investment and farming method changes. The dairying proposals in the Mackenzie Basin are the most well-known case in point.
Green groups are feeling they have compromised a great deal already to get to this point in the forum deliberations, while industrial and dairying interests have given little ground at all. Unless the Govt is intentionally buying fights on traditional political cleavage points – its labour market and mining announcements are producing this effect – it seems likely Smith will be looking hard for some wins for the environmental lobby over coming weeks.
Copyright © Media Information Ltd
NZ Energy & Environment Business Week
Amalgamated Dairies