A Word from the Mayor
10 May 2012
Debate over water, across Canterbury and NZ is not about to go away any time soon. A number of initiatives are underway throughout the country including ECan’s Regional “Land and Water Plan“, the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) and Government’s Land & Water Forum. Each one is a serious and genuine attempt to put in place enduring mechanisms to manage water into the future, to ensure its acceptable quality and appropriate distribution, and to ensure it can meet the needs and aspirations of the community which are expressed in the four values, Economic, Cultural, Environmental and Recreational, no value having a dominance over the other.
With accelerating demand on our water resource, which we are totally reliant on and use in countless ways, it is non-negotiable that we develop plans and agree on its future management in terms of acceptable water quality and the way it is allocated, stored and reticulated.
One of the mechanisms, ECan’s Land and Water Plan is out for consultation and it may be a good idea to check it out. The National Policy Statement for fresh water will guide this Plan; it will also incorporate river flow plans that were developed after having undergone lengthy processes and it will also reflect the directional intent of the locally developed Zone Implementation Programmes (ZIPs). The Zone Committee work represents the CWMS initiative referred to above.
The Land and Water Forum is a NZ wide process, which very much copies the CWMS principles developed over the last 10 years. This process involves bringing together stakeholders from every conceivable viewpoint to develop a vision for the future of water. This is required to be achieved in a collaborative and co-operative spirit. Also topical at the moment are the NZ drinking Water Standards.
We have signaled in our draft LTP what we believe is the best approach for Hurunui to achieve compliance across our thirteen schemes. However for our problematic rural schemes we may yet see more sensible and affordable options emerge, arguably the result of persistent lobbying. Pressure to rationalize community water supplies also appears to be gaining momentum.
Winton Dalley
Winton.dalley@hurunui.govt.nz