Mark Peart: Environment and economics - the Waitaki dilemma

A phoney war in the battle for water allocation in the South Island's Waitaki catchment has just ended. It's now that the real fun starts.

The five Government-appointed members of the Waitaki Catchment Water Allocation Board have begun writing their final version of a plan for the catchment.

Their deadline of September 30 cannot be extended and the final document is eagerly awaited by a raft of people (pun intended).

The draft plan and the process created by Parliament to shepherd it towards the September deadline has been much-criticised; the plan for excluding irrigation and hydro generation from potential allocations on the lower Waitaki, the process for the impossibly tight timing.

Many people with an interest in the issue feel disenfranchised. Questions remain about whether even five highly skilled experts can deliver a balanced formula in such a short period.

The board would argue that six weeks of hearing in person from about a quarter of the 1200 people and organisations who made submissions on the draft plan is a demonstration of comprehensive consultation. Perhaps. Certainly members now have access to considerably more scientific evidence than they did previously, much of it from generator Meridian Energy.

Meridian is the dominant player in the process and that was underlined by its six days on the witness stand and licence to present more than 1200 pages of evidence.

The company has put forward its own alternative minimum-flow regime for the catchment which it wants inserted into the final plan, with the board discarding its own, less generation-friendly, regime.

It has also been bold enough to promote a tunnel-based hydro development concept centred on the north bank of the lower Waitaki River.

This would be a slimmed-down version of the now-cancelled canal-based Project Aqua and, Meridian argues, allow the board to balance competing interests.

It would, of course, require an allocation for hydro which currently doesn't feature in the draft plan.

Therein lies its boldness.

The board has much professional pride at stake, even though its job is done once the final plan is published.

Will it really be so audacious as to throw the draft plan out, tipping the balance away from environmental considerations, and towards the future economic viability of farming in North Otago and South Canterbury, and Meridian's role in meeting increasing national demand for electricity?

My crystal ball needs a good polish, but my instinct is that the board, which seems for the most part conservative, will not make a sudden radical lurch - although some might say that's what it did when it came down so heavily for the environment in its draft.

Chairman Judge David Sheppard, in a statement issued after the hearings finished on August 2, said many of the arguments conflicted, but nearly all of the material had been helpful to the board.

Farmers in North Otago and South Canterbury will be hoping their submissions were helpful enough to protect their substantial economic investments in perpetuity.

* Mark Peart is an Otago-based freelance writer.