Regional council plan ‘entrenches water exploitation’

Canterbury’s regional council, ECan, has started consulting on a plan change which, critics say, will entrench the over-allocation of freshwater.
Lobby group Aotearoa Water Action (AWA), which won a major court judgment against ECan last year, says the proposal is being underplayed by the regional council as “targeted” when its effects could be significant and far-reaching.
Last November, the Supreme Court threw out an appeal by Chinese-owned Cloud Ocean Water, which, alongside another company, wanted to use water consents granted to a wool scour and freezing works at Belfast, Christchurch, for water-bottling facilities using billions of litres of water a year. The issue became a lightning rod for many in Canterbury, and AWA raised tens of thousands of dollars from public donations.
ECan decided to split the ‘take’ and ‘use’ portions of the water consents, but the court found that “problematic”, agreeing with AWA that couldn’t be done under ECan’s land and water regional plan. In other words, water granted for one purpose couldn’t be banked and used for another.
At the time, Newsroom reported the decision could have wide-ranging implications for regional councils and companies seeking water consents.
Now, ECan has proposed a fix, known as plan change 8 to the land and water plan.
ECan’s regional planning manager Andrew Parrish says the draft plan change would “allow applications for a change in use for consented water”, among other amendments.
In a paper to ECan’s council meeting on August 28, the plan change was described as “minor”, and targeted and technical in nature. Pre-consultation is now occurring with government agencies, councils, mana whenua, and a herd of infrastructure providers, irrigation companies, and industry groups, as well as a handful of environmental interests.
“Subject to the time it takes for this consultation and the time needed to process feedback, and a decision by the regional council, we still hope to notify in November,” Parrish says. “That is the point at which the wider public is encouraged to have their say.”
At the August 28 meeting, AWA convenor Peter Richardson told ECan councillors the changes were being underplayed by ECan’s planners as they could have “significant and far-reaching” effects. The regulator needed to be able to properly consider the effects of water use, he said – including the cultural, social, economic, and health effects.
Staff didn’t present councillors with a range of options for plan change 8, just a single fix.
Richardson tells Newsroom the plan change would “completely put aside the Supreme Court decision”.
After the court judgment, if the existing use of a water take didn’t continue in a fully-allocated or over-allocated catchment, the water would effectively be returned, he says – “so it actually reduces over-allocation”.
“What’s proposed now, it entrenches over-allocation subject to any clawbacks, because basically that water is available for anyone who wants to use it for any purpose,” Richardson says.
(In planning parlance, the plan change says a new water use would be a “non-complying activity”. The report to council said: “Because the rule is to apply in fully and over-allocated zones, the rule is proposed to have strong criteria, such as ensuring the permit has been utilised in the last five years, that the volume is reasonable and efficient for the proposed use, and a clawback of some of the water previously granted to aid in reducing over-allocation.”)
Irrigation New Zealand chief executive Vanessa Winning says it’s too early to have a view on plan change 8. “There is a lot of consultation and discussion to go before we would form any fixed views – a lot of water to go under the bridge, so to speak.”
Rangitata Diversion Race Management chief executive Tony McCormick says it is still reviewing the information provided by ECan – a sentiment echoed by Susan Goodfellow, Central Plains Water’s chief executive.
“We have appreciated the opportunity for early engagement on the proposal with ECan,” McCormick says.
Water is a huge, and hugely contested, issue in Canterbury. In 2019, the province had almost two-thirds of the country’s irrigated land, at 467,000 hectares. About 58 percent of Canterbury’s irrigated farms were dominantly for dairying.
The sacking of elected Canterbury regional councillors by John Key’s government in 2010, and the appointment of commissioners, was seen by many as a water grab.
ECan’s role as a regulator has been under scrutiny in recent years, especially over a damning report on the Rakaia River leaked to Newsroom in 2021, the author of which described his former employer as a catastrophic failure.
Earlier this year, ECan’s controversial chair Peter Scott lobbied the Government for changes to a long-standing tenet of the Resource Management Act governing freshwater discharges.
As reported by The Press newspaper, ECan only processed about a quarter of consent applications within statutory timeframes in the last financial year, leading to raised eyebrows – and a confusing backtrack – by Environment Minister Penny Simmonds.
AWA’s stance on plan change 8 is nuanced.
The group thinks rule changes allowing for better uses of the province’s scarce water make sense. However, those uses should be publicly debated rather than being left to industrial and commercial water users, or the highest bidder for consents.
If water consents are able to be used for any activity, that entrenches a property right, Richardson says, and increases their value.
“Without any policies or rules that guide the way ECan will have to consider applications to change the use of water, then this could lead to, basically, an unrestrained market for water in Canterbury.”
ECan’s approach to date has been to facilitate the economic exploitation of water, he says – and without appropriate safeguards. “We only need to look at the environmental effects of intensive dairy farming on the Canterbury Plains.”
When presented with the headaches cause by the Supreme Court decision, “they again fell back on that as the driver”.
Proposed plan change 8 initially popped up on the agenda for ECan’s strategy and policy committee meeting on August 14. But the item was pulled, Parrish says, as a precautionary measure.
“We received a letter just the previous day from lawyers representing AWA, and needed time to consider its contents before going to council.”
(The letter, from law firm LeeSalmonLong, said the item contained inaccurate information, lacked transparency, and didn’t appear to put all reasonably practicable options before the committee.)
Nicky Snoyink, Canterbury manager of environmental group Forest & Bird, was preparing to speak at the committee meeting.
“They had a list of parties that they were going to go and ask for feedback on, which was heavily stacked with irrigators and commercial users,” she says. “You can’t do consultation like that because you get a biased draft plan change.”
The list – which didn’t initially include AWA – was expanded before it was presented to the council meeting two weeks later.
(“The list was expanded upon direction from councillors,” Parrish says.)
More generally, Snoyink’s concerns are that there needs to be a process to adequately assess the effects of any new water use.
“If they’re not using [the consented water], it should go back to address the over-allocation, first and foremost, especially where there’s a degraded river, or minimum flows are not being met, or there’s pollution.”
Could this change allow the water-bottling companies to pursue their plans? Richardson says: “That would certainly be the effect of it.” (ECan planners considered a ban on water bottling but decided against recommending one.)
AWA has until Friday to make submissions. “It’s way too short a time period to be able to properly address what’s proposed,” Richardson says. “I’d have to say it looks as though there’s an agenda to push this through pretty quickly.”
ECan’s Parrish says the Supreme Court decision caused unintended consequences, “particularly with the development of infrastructure”. The one example specified in the staff report to councillors was “stormwater treatment wetlands that intercept groundwater”.
“The short timeframe … reflects council’s desire to address these issues with urgency.”