KEY POINTS:
The Crown and Tainui say the draft Waikato River settlement is groundbreaking, but stakeholders now want to know how Tainui's co-management role will work.
On Saturday, after 18 months of talks, Treaty Negotiations Minister Mark Burton and Tainui co-negotiators Tukoroirangi Morgan and Lady Raiha Mahuta released a draft agreement in principle to settle the tribe's long-standing river claim.
It sets precedents in settlement history as it will give the tribe input on decisions, changing how the river is managed.
Environment Waikato is now responsible for the river under the Resource Management Act but the draft proposes two new bodies.
The first, Guardians of the Waikato River, will be made up of Waikato Tainui and other iwi with interests along the river, in equal number to Crown appointees and Environment Waikato members.
Its focus will be the health and wellbeing of the river and it will set a vision and strategy to be implemented by another statutory body.
Environment Waikato chairwoman Jenni Vernon said she welcomed the focus of the agreement, but said it was unclear if her council would become the lesser voice after the agreement.
"The difficulty is I'm not sure where they [the two bodies] sit or which body has more authority - do they go over and above our current policy documents? I don't know."
There was also no mention of how the bodies would be financed. But there was a willingness to make the deal work.
"All of us want the same thing - better water quality."
Ms Vernon said the consultation process Tainui and the Government were now undertaking would make those issues clearer
Waikato Federated Farmers president Peter Buckley said he had no problem with Tainui having a management role.
But he wanted people who lived on the land and who used the river water to be represented on the guardians body.
Genesis Energy, which operates the Huntly Power station, wants to be at the top of that consultation list, spokesman Richard Gordon said.
Whatever happened with co-management, the supply of 40cu m of river water a second needed to be "absolutely" protected.
"The rock bottom for us is that we need to have access to cooling water," he said.
Ownership of the river's waters, which Mr Morgan said in April was holding up the settlement, has been set aside from the draft, meaning the tribe could still pursue ownership.
But Mr Burton said that issue was set aside so that there could be progress on the common ground both parties agreed on.
