The $815,000 of funding announced yesterday would allow the independent irrigation companies in the Manuherikia valley to amalgamate under a single legal entity, Manuherikia WaterCo, and do remaining technical, environmental and financial studies to decide the final scope of the Falls Dam proposal, a Crown Investments statement said.
The Manuherikia Catchment Water Strategy Group, which has been investigating the irrigation project for several years, was then likely to become solely an advisory group as WaterCo took over responsibilities and finalised the project, strategy group chairman Allan Kane said.
Three options have been investigated for the project: raising the existing Falls dam by about 6m, or building a new dam, which would be either 12m-15m or 20m higher than the existing dam. The options would have cost between $28 million and $80 million.
But Mr Kane said a new proposal was now a possibility as no clear preference between the three options had been shown by landowners. The proposal could now be for something ''in between'' raising the existing dam by about 6m and building a new ''very low'' dam. The range of costs was now between $28 million and $68million.
Landowners representing 13,000ha in the Manuherikia Valley had registered their interest in the new scheme, and pledged $50 per ha to fund studies into the project, Mr Kane said.
They would now be asked to pay $25 per ha of that money to provide enough funding to meet Crown Irrigation criteria, he said.
Crown Irrigation chief executive Murray Gribben said it was expected the project would at least double the size of water storage in Falls Dam, ''providing considerable scope to increase the hectares of farmland and orchards under reliable irrigation''.
Mr Kane said the shareholders of WaterCo would be the Omakau, Blackstone, Manuherikia and Galloway irrigation companies. Nominations for farmer/irrigator directors had now been called, and ''a couple of'' independent directors would also be appointed.
He said it would probably take about another year to decide on the final Falls Dam proposal, and it was hoped a decision would be made before the end of 2019.
