Plans by three companies to develop dairy farms in the upper Waitaki basin have hit a snag after an Environment Canterbury panel refused them irrigation water.
Southdown Holdings Ltd, Williamson Holdings Ltd and Five Rivers Ltd want to set up 16 dairy farms with up to 17,850 cows housed in cubicles in the Ohau and Omarama area.
Yesterday, four commissioners appointed by Environment Canterbury declined the companies' resource consent applications for water, but did grant land use consents for irrigation infrastructure.
The decisions are part of 109 individual applications being considered by the panel since September 2009.
The other decisions will be released between now and Christmas.
But it was the three dairy farm developments which caused a national outcry and claims of factory farming from the Green Party.
The three companies have already invested millions of dollars in the process and the wait had placed the applicants "under considerable strain, both financial and emotional", according to a letter sent in June to the panel asking when decisions would be made.
Yesterday, attempts to contact companies' spokesman Richard Peacocke were unsuccessful.
While North Otago Federated Farmers' high country chairman Simon Williamson was reluctant to comment, he feared other applications would be declined and was particularly worried about farmers who had applied to renew existing water consents for irrigation.
If they were not renewed, apart from the investment already in irrigation structure, it would have a major effect on farming and "huge repercussions" for the whole community.
The panel is making both over-arching decisions looking at the whole catchment and individuals findings.
All water applications with the nine decisions released yesterday were declined.
No water was granted for the three dairy companies, despite them putting up a more traditional farming alternative.
The biggest concern for the panel was water quality, despite a water quality study carried out by Mackenzie Water Research Ltd covering many of the applications.
The proposals before it could have "serious adverse consequences" for groundwater, streams rivers and lakes, the panel said.
Despite the research in the water quality study, the panel questioned the predictions and findings which, it said, were based on inadequate information.
The panel also rejected proposed "adaptive management" - changing management plans if and when effects emerged - as an answer.
While that worked in some instances, the panel feared effects would be irreversible before plans could be adapted.
Other issues which played a part in the panel's decisions were landscape values - although it did not accept "greening" of the high country would be as major as some feared - and Ngai Tahu cultural and spiritual values.
The panel did recognise the "real economic benefits" from irrigation, but said they were only one of the issues to consider.
