Water companies pool resources

New irrigation has brought major economic benefits to North Otago. Photo by David Bruce.

• Manager has eye to the future 

After a decade of battling to protect their rights to water, lower Waitaki irrigation companies have formed a collective to pool financial resources and knowledge.

The new Waitaki Irrigators' Collective Ltd has just appointed a policy manager - Elizabeth Soal, of Dunedin - and plans to take a more proactive approach to issues that will affect them all.

The collective brings together the Lower Waitaki Irrigation Company, Morven-Glenavy-Ikawai Irrigation Company, Maerewhenua District Water Resources Company, North Otago Irrigation Company and Upper Waitaki Community Irrigation Company, representing interests on both sides of the river.

Together, they irrigate about 61,000ha in North Otago and Waimate.

The collective also has a provision for new members, particularly groups covering irrigators who have individual schemes along the lower river.

The new collective is funded by a levy based on the number of hectares irrigated by each company.

They companies have all faced major challenges over the past seven years, starting with the Meridian Energy Project Aqua proposal announced in April 2001 but cancelled in March 2004.

That scheme could have taken up to 340cumecs of water out of the river into a 60km-long power canal and used it to power six power stations between Kurow and the SH1 bridge, leaving little for future irrigation and having a major impact on existing schemes.

Since then, the irrigation companies have had to deal with a series of expensive and major issues, including the Government's decision to have a board prepare a water allocation plan for the Waitaki catchment, Meridian's north bank tunnel concept power scheme, the Meridian Energy-South Canterbury Irrigation Trust Hunter Downs irrigation scheme and processing 52 resource consent applications for the lower river below the Waitaki dam.

They have been involved in resource consent hearings at regional council and Environment Court levels at huge cost, both in terms of money and time.

On some issues, they adopted a collaborative approach by pooling resources and knowledge, but in others they overlapped on common issues.

The idea for the formation of an irrigators' collective came last year from Lower Waitaki Irrigation Company chairman Chris Dennison.

"Success to date in protecting the interests of existing irrigators has only been successful because existing irrigators have adopted a united, co-operative approach when dealing with the various parties involved.

"The creation of WIC (the collective) is designed to formalise this informal arrangement, to provide a more focused, professional structure," he said in a discussion paper.