In a recent opinion piece, "How much of a river should run through it?" (ODT 26.7.23), regarding the Manuherikia, Gerrard Eckhoff suggests "the need for a proper debate between urban and rural New Zealand".
Really? It is facile to suggest that the debate required is simply a matter of bridging a rift between rural and urban people (who, in any case in his view, don’t really understand the operational requirements of land management).
I am aware of many rural folk who manage and farm land but who also value the natural environment, in particular the values of freshwater ecosystems. These folk can see what our past and present methods of land use have done and are doing to these ecosystems. They know, as does society as a whole know, that we have to do better.
That is why, in response to public consultation for both the National Policy Statement for Freshwater (2020, and its subsequent iterations) by the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and for the developing land and water plan by the Otago Regional Council (ORC), there have been such strong requests for better management and protection of freshwater values. This is not just politics at play, but characteristic of the groundswell in the general public’s perception of how the environment should be valued and managed.
The issue is not just "aesthetics", "introduced species" and "recreationists" but the very "life force" of the river. The Manuherikia behaves in a completely different way from normal rivers, which gain in volume and flow as tributary streams enter on their passage downstream. If one looks at the flow schematic graph (as was shown in the recent ODT The Mix article "The Rivers Turn"), the existing seven-day mean annual low flow (MALF) at the campground, near Alexandra, is the complete opposite of the "naturalised" seven-day MALF at this site. The river’s most upstream monitoring site, at the Forks, shows a naturalised seven-day MALF of 1.009 litres per second.
It should get to a naturalised seven-day MALF at the campground of 3900 l/s. However, the actual seven-day MALF at the campground is 915 l/s, because of water abstraction.
All these figures are taken from the 2016 ORC report "Management flows for aquatic ecosystems in the Manuherikia River and Dunstan Creek". This should satisfy Mr Eckhoff’s plea for the use of "hard evidence and established data" in this debate.
To claim that: "Most would argue that the right balance of the river use has been found over many years", is, at best, a complete denial of natural justice to the ecosystem, when 75% of the seven-day MALF is abstracted for agricultural use and just 25% is left in the river, and, at worst, environmental sacrilege. Those who claim for "balance" in environmental arguments always expect that "balance" to be at the expense of the environment.
Sure, let’s have some balance then. How about 1950 l/s at the campground? That’s 50% of the naturalised seven-day MALF for the river, 50% for agricultural take. Seems a fair balance, doesn’t it?
Why does Mr Eckhoff have a problem with Kai Tahu being on the policy committee? Why shouldn’t they have a say? After all it was their ancestors who were dispossessed of their assets (including freshwater ecosystems) by our Pakeha ancestors (regardless of how that was achieved), who then set about degrading the "mauri" ("life force") of those assets.
They are not asking for the river to be returned to its historical unmodified flow, but to have sufficient mauri to enable mahinga kai values to be returned to it. Pretty much the same sentiment as wider society is requesting.
However, I have some sympathy for the farmers who have been caught by the way society’s values have changed over time. It certainly cannot be easy to navigate the plethora of planning and environmental constraints that now apply and seem certain to become only more detailed and complex over time, as well as the difficulties involved with obtaining the necessary finance to continue to operate their businesses.
However, when the Resource Management Act came into force in 1991, it contained provisions that would require "deemed permit" (previously known as mining privilege) holders to obtain resource consents (water permits) to replace those permits as of October 1, 2021. Effectively, the majority of water takes in the Manuherikia catchment. Such new permits would contain provisions for minimum flows. So irrigators have had 30 odd years’ notice to get used to the idea that they would have to abide by environmental constraints to take water by now.
However, the irrigators have been badly let down by both the ORC and the Central Otago District Council (CODC).
The ORC in its 2004 operational regional plan water (RPW) previously had a rule allowing the consent holder to keep taking the amount of water noted on their consent even though the holder was required to use more efficient means of irrigation than wild flooding and border dykeing, providing the holder could show that this amount of water had been used over the previous five years.
This allowed the consent holder to expand the area irrigated, with the water freed up, rather than requiring the freed-up water to be returned to the river, thus improving the river’s flow below the point of take. However, while this did encourage more efficient use of water, it resulted in irrigators coming to rely on the extra areas irrigated as integral to their farming operations.
Of course, it did nothing to improve in-stream flows. This was rectified by RPW plan change 7 in March 2022. It was one of the rules found not to be "fit for purpose" by Prof Peter Skelton’s 2019 report on the review of the ORC’s planning functions to Environment Minister David Parker. Plan change 7 now requires there be no increase in the area irrigated, apart from those limited areas of orchard or horticultural land which had mainline irrigation pipes installed prior to March 18, 2020.
The CODC, in the Central Otago district plan, allowed dairy farming as a permitted agricultural use throughout the Central Otago district. It is questionable whether dairying should ever have been allowed in the Manuherekia Valley, on those gravel soils.
Yes, great for stock and pasture management, with no possibility of pasture pugging. Not so great for increased nutrient loading to the Manuherikia River due to easy transmission of these pollutants through the gravels to the river.
Yes, the overuse of irrigation water and fertiliser has been criticised by folk who don’t manage land, but agricultural scientists who have researched these issues have found many of these criticisms to be valid. They have, of course, been looking at them through a different lens, in terms of effectiveness for farmers, but the conclusions have been remarkably similar. Many farmers now carry out nutrient testing of their soils prior to applying specifically required amounts and varieties of fertiliser, thus saving themselves considerable costs as a result. Much the same applies to water use.
Nevertheless, there should be funding provided by central government to assess requirements and assist irrigators to provide improved/additional infrastructure to take and distribute water from the Clutha River to the lower part of the Manuherikia catchment. Also to assist with on-farm storage for those properties which are situated too high in the catchment to benefit from Clutha water.
Funding is also required for assessment of change to more drought-resistant and less water-demanding pasture, crop and orchard species, where applicable and possible. Such taxpayer funding should be viewed as society’s assistance to farmers who have found themselves caught in a bind not solely of their own making. It should be provided pro rata, assessed on the basis of benefit to the irrigator versus benefit to the local community and to society as a whole.
I agree with Mr Eckhoff that the ORC should speak out on behalf of its constituents. So it should, but that speaking out should be for all its constituents, not just for those who farm the land.
For far too long the "balance" Mr Eckhoff speaks of has been completely lopsided, in favour of those who farm the land with only a faint nod to the rest of us who are also part of the community.
No-one is suggesting that farming in the Manuherikia should end, in order to protect the environment. However, as a matter of fairness and "balance" society has the right to ask that its environmental assets be managed with a 21st century ethos rather than with a century-old approach.
Just as the farmers wish to pass their land on to their children in a better state than when they took it on, so too does society as a whole wish to pass on to our children a freshwater environment better than the one we have inherited.
— Murray Neilson is a trustee of the Clutha Fisheries Trust, a former Fish & Game councillor and a retired Department of Conservation freshwater technical support officer.
