Project manager Hamish Anderson said he was ''disappointed'' the Clutha Development initiative received no funding assistance from the Otago Regional Council (ORC) in the coming year after the council imposed targeted rates to implement and enforce new water quality rules.
The first meeting of the 50 member Clutha district water catchments quality management project team - 14 farmers and 36 rural professionals - is expected to convene in Balclutha within the next 10 days.
''In kind'' support from the ORC would be provided to the water project, but the request for $45,000 funding for three years was not supported in the council's long term plan deliberations. The water project was started in part to assist Clutha farmers in meeting the requirements laid out in the regional council's water plan, Mr Anderson said.
''We know that the rivers in the Clutha district area are some of the most degraded in Otago, and that's because of topography, drainage, weather, soil type and intensive agriculture - because it's a productive agricultural area,'' he said.
''I just wanted some of the money used to help farmers achieve the results [the ORC wanted]. ... It helps the ORC immensely.''
ORC chairman Stephen Woodhead applauded the project, calling it a ''fantastic community driven initiative'' but said the council ''didn't see it as appropriate for ORC to fund it - it may not have necessarily met our needs''.
''They're using it to understand where the farmers are at with respect to compliance with ORC's water plan, the Otago water plan. That's fine, but we could see no basis for why ratepayers from throughout the region would carry a portion of that cost.
''We've got our own quite extensive programme going on anyway, for different reasons. This is a farmer education type tool and council absolutely supports and applauds the initiative.''
Mr Anderson said aside from providing support and education, farmers who signed up for the project would begin testing the water that left their properties. It was ''a worthy project helping to deliver the outcomes they wanted by 2020''.
Mr Anderson said he expected at least 210 farmers to sign up to the project before the end of the year, most of them by December, for the first round of water testing in January and February.
The project expected about $52,000 funding directly from a sign up fee from farmers and $81,000 of performance related funding from the Ministry of Primary Industries over three years.
Balclutha accounting firm Shand Thomson was contributing $7500 over three years, and farmers signed up across the district would contribute $250 per year.
The Otago water plan requires water leaving farms to be of good quality by 2020 and waterways affected by farming to be of good quality by 2025.
