Regional Council Taking Firmer Approach on Water Users

 

A staff report to the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council Environmental Management Committee yesterday (Wednesday 14 July) has emphasised the importance of accurate water use data from consent holders to enable Council to make sound water management decisions.

In many cases, consent holders are required to have a water meter and return the data to the Regional Council as a condition of their consent.

The Regional Council has taken steps in the past few years to tighten up on required water meter returns from users, such as growers, industry and farmers. 

“We have made a concerted effort in the past few years and are really paying attention to making sure consent holders comply with their water take consents, as Hawke’s Bay people tell us that good water management is important,” said Darryl Lew, Group Manager Resource Management.

In 2006 Compliance staff identified that there were gaps in the water use data caused by irregular or late data returns from consent holders. This was causing problems in terms of information available for scientific investigations into water resources and in ensuring compliance.  As a result, Council was unable to make secure policy decisions about water allocation or resource management. 

Over the past 3 years, the Council compliance staff have used a formal strategy to put more pressure on any consent holders who were slow in submitting data.  Staff make follow up reminder phone calls to consent holders if data is not supplied on time; if data is still not supplied, an abatement notice is issued.   Where consent holders fail to submit data, Council has no choice but follow up with enforcement action. 

In 2008/09, 48 abatement notices were issued.  In 2009/10 the same strategy was used and 34 abatement notices were issued and 9 infringement notices. 

While this has taken a lot of effort from staff with reminder calls and administration, Darryl Lew, the Group Manager Resource Management says the quality of the water use data has now increased to acceptable standards.

“It would be good to get 100% compliance, and it is something that we are working towards,” he said.

Water take holders can provide data to the Council by various methods including web-based entry, post, fax or email.  

More recently the Council has been working towards enabling water users  to set up telemetry systems, whereby data is transmitted accurately and on a regular basis direct from meters via cellphone or radio transmission to the Council.

“This eliminates the problem of human error with people forgetting or being away,” he said.

During the last year the Environment Court has treated breaches of resource consent conditions more stringently, and the Regional Council has successfully prosecuted two companies.  A wine grower made a business decision in summer to take water for new vines despite a low flow ban in place and being told not to by Council Executives after requesting to breach their consent; this resulted in a $50,000 fine.  In the second case, an orchardist took water in excess of their allocation over a 4 week period, despite Council staff warnings, and was subsequently fined $8000.

“If we have poor data on our valuable water resources, it actually falls back as a problem for water users.  Without accurate data the scientists cannot develop good resource modelling, and this leads to more conservative decision-making on water allocation policies which helps no-one,” said Mr Lew.