While still subject to Environment Court appeals, these rules would limit the water allocated to irrigators to their “actual and reasonable” use, one of the steps in the essential work needed to protect our rivers and groundwater from further degradation.
Reports that this amounts to reducing takes by almost half seem designed to mislead.
It only appears that much because the annual volume of water allocated on paper was enormous. That amount, around 180 million cubic metres, has in fact never been used — and should never have been handed out to begin with (actual use has never been much higher than 90 million m3).
In practice, it means producers will generally continue to be able to access the amount of water they’ve used to date.
Despite this and knowing for years it was coming, some industry leaders seem to consider it unfair and appear shocked.
There seems to be little appreciation on their part that it was unfair for the wider community’s collective resource to be handed out to private interests without a responsible limit in the first place.
Frustratingly, the leaders who are taking issue with Tank (and stoking misplaced anger in others) were previously some of its strongest supporters.
Leaders of the “revolt” include orchardists John Bostock, and regional councillors Xan Harding and Jerf van Beek.
In 2017, Bostock lauded the “scientific research and robustness” of the Tank process while opposing the proposed Ngaruroro River Water Conservation Order.
Harding stated that Tank would “deliver an equal or better environmental outcome” in the Ngaruroro catchment than a WCO, and would “minimise … time and expense in appeal processes”.
Van Beek said horticulturalists thought they could look after the river through Tank.
Tank was then a favourite excuse of those exploiting rivers and groundwater to delay essential changes.
The claim was that it would solve everything if the community would just slow down and trust growers and their industry in the process, one they presumably thought they could control.
However, now that Tank is out there and it doesn’t allow industry to do exactly what they wanted — to keep taking more water for commercial use — they’re attacking the process they once lauded.
Industry was involved in developing these necessary limits through Tank. Everyone, including producers, has known freshwater is severely over-allocated and under many pressures.
Yet many producers have failed to consider how they might adapt to what our environment can support. Some have even expanded the operations that are unsustainable and unfit for the land, water, and community around them.
Back in 2017, Bostock accused environmental groups of “gaming” the regional planning process, and said they had “sought to cut off” the Tank process and “impose their position on to everyone else around the table”.
If anything, the opposite is true.
Community groups, iwi, marae, environmental groups, and some future-focused producers have worked for decades to try and protect water so we don’t descend into the almost-unsalvageable position of communities in Canterbury.
Meanwhile, proponents of large-scale irrigation have relentlessly imposed their position on everyone else, a position that all too frequently results in water that is unsafe to swim in, drink, or can’t even be accessed.
We’ve been asked to trust industry leaders who say they’re willing to reduce their impact on waterways, while in practice they’re pushing to delay the rules that would do just that.
Tom Kay was born in Hawke’s Bay and has been involved in the Tank planning process for eight years as a freshwater advocate for Forest & Bird. He is a spokesperson for pressure group ‘Choose Clean Water’.
