Summer didn’t exactly sizzle over the Christmas week around the Manuherikia.
The weather was not conducive to barbecues and sitting around a campsite until the sun finally set and beyond.
Intrepid fishers would have wanted their wet weather gear, and conditions would not have been ideal. Children were not clamouring to be taken to the nearest water hole.
For farmers relying on growing grass for their livelihoods, the story was very different.
Before Christmas, the word was sent out advising irrigators that the amount of water take which was available would be reduced in the coming weeks.
The wet and cooler period over Christmas was a godsend. The paddocks were replenished, grass is growing and there is more water available for irrigation.
For those using the Manuherikia for recreation, wet and cooler weather can be disappointing.
For farmers, lack of water is significant. If farmers lose their farms they lose their livelihoods, their homes and their communities.
Against this backdrop the government as it was in 2020 mandated a new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management to govern regional councils in how they manage water in their areas. This policy imposes a hierarchy of obligations on policies made by regional councils. The implementation of the policy includes principles which give tangata whenua power and authority to make decisions which maintain, protect and sustain their health and wellbeing of, and their relationship with, fresh water.
The top of the hierarchy is the health of the river and its wellbeing.
The second priority is the health needs of the people, such as drinking water.
Once these are taken into account, at the bottom is the provision of social, economic and cultural wellbeing.
The hierarchy imagines that the health and wellbeing of the river is paramount, and that human uses of water are far less important. It allows an exception for those who use the water in their own homes, which protects them from understanding the hard choices which are being made.
It may be possible to enforce this hierarchy if by health and wellbeing of the river, water quality is meant. Users of the river are on board for the idea of improving quality by whatever means necessary.
But instead the government decided that healthy rivers are to be judged on flow.
The pinnacle of best flow is thought to be whatever the river would do naturally without man-made obstacles.
The Otago Regional Council has recently determined that it cannot actually sort out what would naturally have been in the Manuherikia river without the Falls Dam. It has then determined that the natural flow is to mean the amount where there is a Falls Dam but there is no irrigation taken from it. This weird and completely non-natural flow is then used to suggest that a minimum amount at Alexandra Campground could be 4000 litres/sec. This has allowed people to believe that the river in its healthy state would be 4000 litres/sec and that anything less amounts to irrigating farmers degrading the river.
Anecdotally, before the Falls Dam existed the Manuherikia was thought to have run dry on occasion. There was a report done years ago which suggested the Manuherikia would reach a minimum of just a tad over 1000 litres/sec if there had not been human intervention via Falls Dam.
The dam allows for water for irrigation. But crucially what the dam also does is allow for the flow to be more than it would have been naturally over the summer. Calling a state where the dam is there but there is no irrigation natural and giving people the idea 4000 litres/sec would have been achievable if the river was left to its own devices is a significant problem. It is even more difficult when coupled with a requirement that the health of the river (interpreted as high flow) is the top of the hierarchy.
The Manuherikia river is used for town water supply needs, which are growing, stock water needs, recreational and economic benefits.
There are clearly hard questions needing to be asked about how to accommodate these various uses. A solution will only be lasting if it is fair for all.
One of the more obvious answers is to raise the height of the Falls Dam. This would give better security of supply and allow more of the needs to be satisfied.
While tangata whenua generally disapprove of damming rivers, they have been shown to be pragmatic about such issues in some circumstances.
The cost of what amounts to a new dam could be met one third by central government on the basis that on behalf of all of us it is their job to look after the environment and make provisions for our enjoyment of our waterways. Another third could be paid for by local government, since those who live around the river should contribute to a situation where their supply is guaranteed, at least in the way that most town water supplies are. The final third should be paid by those who benefit economically from more resilient water provision and the ability to irrigate their land.
This would be more fair than the current suggestions that somehow the irrigators who own Falls Dam should have as a priority to give up the water they have collected to provide for an unnaturally high minimum river flow and town supply to those who are not irrigators.
- Hilary Calvert is a former Otago regional councillor, MP and DCC councillor.
