A website auctioning people's unused water is a de facto water market, Environment Minister David Benson-Pope says.
Environment Canterbury said last week that the newly launched Hydrotrader website could make it easier for people such as farmers to see what water resources might be available.
Councillor Mark Oldfieldsaid farmers who might not be using all the water allocated to them would be able to see if another farmer wanted to use it, and how much demand there was for it close to home.
Consents had been changing hands for decades as farms were sold but more recently irrigators had been able to transfer parts of their water allocation for short periods, for instance, to help a neighbouring farmer finish off a crop.
Oldfield said regional councils would still have to approve site-to-site transfers and ensure the environmental checks were in place if the water was being used on a different site with a short-term consent holder.
He said the establishment of the website was a signal that Canterbury irrigators were moving to an era of enhancing water use. Benson-Pope said the Government was very clear that water was a public resource.
The Government had no intention of privatising water, or establishing water markets for trading water rights. The Hydrotrader website was a "de facto water market", he said.
A water permit was not an ownership right but a permission to access water and use it subject to conditions of the permit. "I have to question whether a consent holder who has effectively got access to a public resource at no cost should profit by transferring some or all of that public resource to a private bidder."
