''There is a stampede going on,'' Fish and Game chief executive Niall Watson said at a recent meeting.
The Otago Regional Council began the process towards setting minimum flows on rivers with Plan Change 1C (water allocation and use) which became operative last year.
While only a few rivers had since had minimum flows set, the council was making it a priority over the next two years to complete the process on the rest of the region's rivers.
Mr Watson said Fish and Game had real concerns significant applications for water takes were being processed before the minimum flow process on those rivers had been completed.
In many cases, the level of water able to be taken was above what Fish and Game believed would be a healthy minimum flow.
The regional council was relying on a ''catch-all'' condition on those consents saying they were subject to any future minimum flow, he said.
However, in the meantime, landowners were investing ''heavily'' in irrigation infrastructure to take amounts of water higher than a minimum flow could allow.
''Once they have invested in infrastructure, it is much more difficult to claim it back then.''
The regional council needed to do more environmental assessments when considering these applications, he said.
Fish and Game could only ask the council to apply residual flows to match where ''we think minimum flows will be.
''We may end up objecting to some consents in the future.''
Fish and Game council member Murray Neilson said recent Resource Management Act changes meant infrastructure costs and investment must be taken into account during the consent process.
Regional council resource director Selva Selvarajah said he did not believe there was a ''stampede'' to get in consents, although growing numbers of landholders were converting their mining privileges to Resource Management Act consents, which the council encouraged.
Mining privileges for water takes expired in 2021 and, until then, landholders with those rights were exempt from any minimum flows set, he said.
So, the earlier the landholders with mining rights applied for consents the better, as far as controlling water extraction from rivers when river levels were low.
Under its policies, the council was required to accept consent applications except for new applications in over-allocated catchments, he said.
Those applicants would then be required to comply with any minimum flow which was set after community consultation.
