Community consultation on a plan change for the Cardrona River catchment and Wanaka-Cardrona aquifer is likely to start at the end of the year.
Last week, the council accepted the recommendations of a minimum flow of 900 litres per second of surface water be set for the Lindis River catchment.
Farmers affected said many farms would no longer be economically viable.
Council planning and resource management director Fraser McRae said the last round of community consultation on the Cardrona River catchment took place in 2014 and since then the council had worked to develop a minimum flow recommendation which would meet all the needs of the community.
Flow recorders had been installed on the river catchment to help the council understand the hydrology of the river and how much water was being used.
The council would go back to the community before a plan change was notified, and that was likely to happen this summer, Mr McRae said.
Cardrona Landcare Group president Isabella Anderson said the group had not yet discussed the Lindis River decision and what it could mean for Cardrona Valley farmers.
"We going to have to get together sometime soon and have a bit of a talk about what happened but at the moment there’s not much we can say."
