A public meeting has been called in Twizel to give people the chance to learn about and debate proposals for 16 new dairy farms, with up to 17,850 cows, intended for the Ohau and Omarama areas.
The meeting on Monday at 7.30pm has been organised by Graham Stewart, a Twizel resident for 37 years, who hopes the gathering will fill the 250-seat theatrette at the Twizel Events Centre.
The Twizel public meeting is being called to inform people about the proposals from three companies - Five Rivers Ltd, Southdown Holdings Ltd and Williamson Holdings Ltd - and their projects' potential downstream environmental effects.
When contacted yesterday, Mr Stewart said he hoped representatives from Environment Canterbury (ECan) would be at the meeting to outline the proposals and resource consents process, along with Waitaki First chairwoman HelenBrookes and other speakers.
Representatives from dairy farm companies were welcome to attend.
A director of two of the farm companies, Southdown Holdings and Williamson Holdings, Richard Peacocke, yesterday said he did not want to comment on the meeting and whether the companies would be represented.
Mr Stewart said information would be available at the meeting on how people could make submissions on applications by the three companies for resource consents for the dairy farms, including discharging up to 1.783 million litres a day of dairy effluent to land.
The meeting was open to anyone, not just residents in the area, and Mr Stewart said he wanted "both sides of the story".
A map of the proposed dairy farms would be available, along with submission forms and information on how to make submissions.
"We would like another couple of hundred other submissions from people," he said.
Mr Stewart said he decided to organise the meeting after seeing ECan's advertisement calling for submissions on the resource consent applications from the three companies.
"I looked at them and saw where they are going to put effluent ponds and the effluent on to land - it is going into the groundwater which will affect the whole area over the next 30 years," he said.
The 45,000 people who visited the area over the holiday season for fishing, swimming and boating would all be affected by that.
Submissions close on December 18 for the Five Rivers and Southdown applications and January 18 for Williamson Holdings.
