City slickers facing water rights battle

Auckland businessmen behind this country's biggest dairy farm conversion face a tough fight for their share of Waikato River water.

Wairakei Pastoral, whose shareholders are some of New Zealand's richest men, including Trevor Farmer, Adrian Burr and Mark Wyborn, wants to take 83,000cu m of water a day from the river to irrigate thousands of hectares of commercial forestry land as it becomes farmland.

That is almost twice the average amount that flows through the Waikato pipeline to Auckland for drinking, around 50,000cu m a day.

The proposal would create 20 dairy farms of up to 500ha with 1000 cows each. Just over 9000ha will become sheep and cattle farms and the rest retired for environmental reasons.

State-owned agriculture giant Landcorp is running the conversion, expected to be completed in 20 years.

"It's the biggest project of its kind in the country," said project manager Jon Williams, of Sinclair Knight Merz consultants.

"In terms of the quantity, [the water take] is a small proportion of the river's flow but compared to other water takes it's a large take," he said.

Water allocation is managed to a limit of 10 per cent of the lowest flows recorded for any five-year period in the Waikato River. At present, the level is at 9.3 per cent.

Regulator and regional council Environment Waikato, which recommends the plan goes ahead, says Wairakei Pastoral's plans would bring it to just under the limit.

But river users Mighty River Power and Genesis Energy say the water take would be just too big.

Genesis runs the Huntly Power Station, which takes cool water from the river and discharges heated water back into the river under strict environmental limits.

Last summer generation was cut at Huntly when the river's level dropped.

Genesis says the Wairakei Pastoral water take could mean power cuts for up to 7300 people in a dry summer.

"The simple fact is, you take water out of the river, there's going to be less," said spokesman Richard Gordon. "[Environment Waikato] can't take water it's allocated to us and allocate it to someone else."

Generator Mighty River Power, which also operates under strict rules including maintaining agreed water levels in Lake Taupo, also opposes the plan. "The water sought is allocated to Mighty River for hydro electricity generation, any abstraction would compromise that use in the Waikato River and Lake Taupo," it says.

Fish and Game says run-off would threaten trout fisheries in the upper Waikato River and five hydro lakes.

Three iwi, including Tainui and Tuwharetoa, are also opposed.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth said recent talk of a tradeable water market in New Zealand meant companies could grab a significant water right and then sell it off. "It's like the utilities on the Monopoly board, once they get it, they're in a position to on-sell it," said spokesman Bob Tait.