Farmers have told freshwater commissioners the Otago Regional Council failed to properly engage with them when drafting policy for the region.
Otago Water Resource Users Group, Federated Farmers and DairyNZ counsel Bridget Irving said the "deficiencies" this created would trickle through the council’s regional policy statement and into the rules the council created around water use in the region.
The council was required to establish meaningful contact with the region’s farming communities in the development of its proposed regional policy statement "particularly in relation to the Otago expression of Te Mana o Te Wai and the freshwater visions".
The council had failed to canvass farmers in the region on the full range of opportunities or solutions to address freshwater issues in the region, she said.
While some feedback was sought, the process suffered from "suboptimal timeframes" imposed by Ministry for the Environment spokesman David Parker as well as the peculiarities of the Covid-19 response that coincided with much of the early consultation phase.
"Having obtained input on the values within the catchment, there has been no process of circling back to see whether the visions that council produced following their public meetings reflected what the community wanted, meant, or aspires to."
The approach with farmers appeared to be in contrast to the process the council used with mana whenua, she said.
In the council’s opening statement last week, counsel Simon Anderson addressed the alleged failings.
The outcome of the council’s engagement process was to determine what the community and tangata whenua wanted "as a whole".
"To some extent this must be a fiction.
"There can be no one vision wanted by all the community and all tangata whenua.
"The reality is that whatever is in those visions after this panel has considered it ... there are going to be people who say, ‘well, that’s not what I wanted’."
Last week, freshwater commissioners heard about 24 hours of submissions over four days.
Submitters included Kāi Tahu, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, Central Otago Winegrowers Association, Otago and Central South Island Fish & Game Council and Manawa Energy.
This week, another four days of hearings are scheduled.
Submitters will include Contact Energy, the Dunedin City Council, Beef + Lamb New Zealand, Fonterra, the Department of Conservation and Forest & Bird.
In June 2021, the council publicly notified its proposed regional policy statement.
However, a High Court decision required it to be separated into two parts — freshwater and non-freshwater.
The non-freshwater hearing has already taken place.
The regional policy statement is a foundation document for the council’s forthcoming land and water plan and is supposed to be operative before the land and water plan is notified.
