Farmers and other applicants should have decisions by Christmas on their applications for water from the upper Waitaki catchment.
Some applicants have been waiting more than a decade for an answer.
An Environment Canterbury panel which is considering 111 resource consent applications to take, use and discharge water in the catchment west of the Waitaki dam plans to start releasing its decisions in two parts, from November 21.
The first, part A, is the overall decision and how the panel decided on that strategy. It would be applied to decisions on individual applications.
The second, part B, will be the decisions on each individual application, which include proposals by three companies to develop 16 dairy farms with up to 17,850 cows housed in cubicles at sites in the Ohau and Omarama basins.
Those plans by Southdown Holdings Ltd, Williamson Holdings Ltd and Five Rivers caused national controversy, led to the involvement of the Government and sparked claims of factory farming.
After that, the three companies put up alternative proposals for more traditional farming to be considered by the Environment Canterbury panel.
In August, panel chairman Paul Rogers issued a minute indicating "in all likelihood" decisions would be available in the week commencing November 21.
He has now issued another minute which said the decisions would be in two parts.
Part A, the overarching decision, and several individual decisions would be released in the week of November 21.
The panel would release the remaining individual decisions from November 28 and continue until completed, likely to be before December 23.
Some of the applications date back to early 2000, but were deferred by the Government while the Waitaki catchment water allocation regional plan was prepared. It was completed in 2005.
The panel started hearing the applications in September 2009 and finished in May last year. Since then, it has been under pressure, particularly from the three dairy farm development companies, to deliver decisions.
Most of the applications are for water for irrigation, including new developments and renewals of existing rights.
The panel consists of Mr Rogers (a Christchurch lawyer), environmental consultant Mike Bowden, of Kaiapoi, cultural authority Edward Ellison, of the Otago Peninsula, and water quality consultant Jim Cooke, of Wellington.
