Mark Peart: Waitaki plan irks raft of water users

If the underlying issues weren't so serious, the ongoing debacle over the vexed question of water allocation for the Waitaki River catchment in the central South Island would provide good fodder for a television soap opera.

Certainly, whichever way you look at it - and the permutations are endless - the mess could take years to sort out. As inevitably is the case in these kinds of sagas, the only likely winners are the lawyers.

Even they, in the tortuous process of sorting out who should have how much of the Waitaki's liquid gold and for what, have had their wings clipped. The final plan, due in September, is appealable only on points of law.

The draft plan, which came out in February, and which was devised by a Government-appointed quango called the Waitaki Catchment Water Allocation Board, has been almost universally criticised by nearly every interested party imaginable.

The most aggrieved are irrigators, principally in the lower Waitaki valley, and the state's own electricity generator, Meridian Energy.

Meridian has already begun to flex its not inconsiderable corporate muscle. It threatens to overwhelm and dominate the planned hearing of submissions to the draft plan, with an avalanche of paper and what other parties see as a disproportionate time on the evidence dais.

There's an ironic strand to this saga. The very people who created the board and the process - snatching it out of the hands of the Canterbury Regional Council because they dithered in the preparation of a regional water plan - are our own central Government politicians. Parliament was the instrument for the board's creation.

Cabinet decided on the impossibly short time-frame of less than a year to resolve a knotty problem.

And so it was ironic that when the opportunity presented itself to comment on the draft water allocation plan, the Government, in a whole-of-government submission, went to bat for Meridian - its own electricity generator.

Attorney-General Michael Cullen suggested none-too-subtly that as far as its plan for the lower Waitaki is concerned, the board should "review its proposals to ensure that existing consented activities can continue".

The board did not propose a minimum flow requirement immediately downstream of the Waitaki dam, but the Government suggested one should be set at 120 cumecs, which would allow Meridian to continue to operate within its existing consent provisions.

The board was supposed to be independent, but here we have the political masters who created it putting in their proverbial 10c worth as to how water on the Waitaki should be allocated.

If it wasn't for the fact that the board's plan has alienated almost every interested party possible, it would be tempting to have some sympathy for its members.

One group which is far from sympathetic is a collection of South Island councils. They are particularly tetchy. Not only do they vehemently disagree with the thrust of the board's proposals, they are angry at the looming financial burden they will face implementing whatever the final plan contains.

Local government frequently complains about the costs of carrying out functions that central Government has dumped on it. In the Waitaki water case, several small councils in North Otago and South Canterbury in particular argue that the burden is too great for them to bear in addition to everything else.

When Cullen said the Government looked forward to the board's deliberations on the submissions and the delivery of the final plan by September 30, he probably didn't mean to sound the way he did.

His warning: "We are confident it will deliver the best outcomes for the Waitaki catchment and for New Zealand generally" might well have been tagged with a rider: "It had better, or else".

* Mark Peart is an Otago-based freelance writer.