Concerns over the effects of dairy farming on water quality in Hawea Flat will be further addressed by the Otago Regional Council (ORC) at a meeting in the village tomorrow night.
ORC resource science manager Matt Hickey said some "in-depth work" had been carried out over summer which would be presented to the Hawea community to keep them fully informed about its Proposed Plan Change 6A Water Quality submission process, which closes on May 2.
The meeting had been requested by Hawea Flat water quality lobby group Preserve Our Water (Pow), which formed after news broke last August of a large dairy farm conversion at Hawea Flat, downstream of the village's drinking water bores.
"We've done all our consultation around the region but because there was so much interest in that dairy farm and the Hawea Flat people were so concerned, we'd done a couple of meetings with them last year and we promised them, when we'd done all our work, we'd go back and let them know what the outcome was," Mr Hickey said.
"They're definitely pretty passionate about their water out there."
The ORC had been modelling potential impacts of nutrients in the groundwater under Hawea Flat based on land-use change, Mr Hickey said.
"We're proposing setting a limit on how much nitrogen can go on that land to ensure that the groundwater's maintained."
Tomorrow's meeting would explain "all the technical information that backs up why we're proposing the nutrient limits in that area.
"To let them [Hawea community] understand why we've chosen what we have and why we went through that process."
Pow secretary Kim Fogelberg said the group appreciated the ORC's willingness to ensure the community was "kept in the loop".
The meeting is at 7pm at the Hawea Flat community hall. Mr Hickey will be joined there by ORC groundwater scientist Scott Wilson and environmental information and science director John Threlfall.
