The future use of water from the lower Waitaki River may be determined this year under proposed changes to a water allocation plan originally prepared in 2005.
Environment Canterbury (ECan) is considering ''plan change 3'' to the Waitaki catchment water allocation regional plan in a process that started last year when it called for public submissions on the proposal.
That resulted in about 550 submissions, 80% of which opposed the changes being proposed.
ECan then called for cross-submissions, and eight were received.
The next step will be to appoint an independent hearing panel, which is expected to be done within a next month, an ECan spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The panel will then determine when a hearing and consideration of submissions will take place, although it had been indicated it would be in Oamaru and possibly about the middle of this year.
The original water allocation plan, which is still in force, was prepared in 2005 by a government-appointed board, after considering about 1300 submissions, when the river was under pressure from the Project Aqua power scheme.
The plan allocated water throughout the catchment for various uses, set a minimum flow for the lower Waitaki River of 150cumecs at the sea and required Meridian Energy Ltd from 2025 to release water above that to maintain irrigation reliability.
The plan change proposes to have minimum flows between 102cumecs and 150cumecs, provide assured reliability for irrigation and more security when resource consents come up for renewal.
