The Environment Canterbury hearings process to decide on crucial water for 16 new dairy farms in the Omarama and Ohau areas will continue, despite the Government calling in effluent resource consent applications and handing them to a board of inquiry to consider.
Southdown Holdings Ltd, Williams Holdings Ltd and Five Rivers Ltd want to develop the farms, which could house up to 17,850 cows in cubicles, but need resource consents for water for irrigation of pastures and crops and to dilute effluent so it then could be sprayed on to land at a lower concentration.
Those consent applications are among 110 being considered at present in Christchurch by an Environment Canterbury (ECan) hearings panel of four commissioners.
The three companies had also applied to ECan for a total of 15 consents to discharge effluent, odours and build effluent storage ponds.
The ECan panel decided in November the effluent consents were so closely tied to the water applications that all would be considered together.
However, the effluent consents were taken out of ECan's hands when Minister for the Environment Nick Smith last month decided to call in those consents under the Resource Management Act.
Legal counsel for the three companies, Christian Whata, then filed a minute with the ECan panel asking whether it could consider and make decisions on the dairy farm water applications or whether that would be delayed because of the process of calling in the consents.
Mr Whata said a decision on the water applications was needed because "this will affect the course adopted by the applicants".
While not said by Mr Whata, if water consents were declined the dairy farms were unlikely to proceed, making it unnecessary for the board of inquiry process to continue.
Without water to grow feed for the cows and dilute the effluent, the dairy farms could not be operated.
ECan panel chairman Paul Rogers called for the views of other parties involved in the upper Waitaki hearings and heard those in Christchurch yesterday morning.
Some parties, including Waitaki First, the Mackenzie Guardians and Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board opposed the companies' request.
Others, such as Te Runanga of Ngai Tahu, were neutral or in support, including some of the other applicants who want water from the upper catchment.
After retiring to consider the views, the panel announced that it could consider and make a decision on the three companies' applications along with the other applications in the upper Waitaki, west of the Waitaki dam.
That decision will be amplified in a memorandum yet to be written by the panel.
