New Zealand is a country
blessed with copious quantities of fresh water. Recently some parts of our
country have had a lot more than they want, some a lot less. It is an extraordinarily
precious resource that must be cared for and used more wisely than it is being
used at present.
Historically water usage in
Canterbury, and in wider New Zealand, has been very opportunist. We have taken
water from wherever we can get it and have used it for whatever we wanted to
use it for. We have not had sufficient regard for the way it has been
extracted, the way we have treated it and the way we have returned it to the
environment. That is all changing. In my opinion 2017 will be the year that the
real issues about the sensible utilisation of water right across our
communities will begin to be understood and accepted.
In Canterbury almost all
the available fresh water passes through or under the Canterbury Plains and out
to sea. However, because of the way we have extracted water we have put
pressure on very vulnerable areas in our environment, both through creating
water shortages and through contaminating water systems in a way that is not
sustainable. We need to work out ways to maximise the economic benefit of fresh
water utilisation while concurrently protecting and continuously improving
water quality and availability.
To drive this change we
will inevitably need to harness existing and new technologies which are
becoming cheaper, more powerful, more available and more applicable every day.
Those technologies will be driven by far better data collection and analysis to
ensure we make the right decisions. We will need to ensure that we get
communities buying into the need for a different approach to water management.
This will reduce waste and inefficiency, allow flexibility and support the
development of infrastructure to ensure reliability of storage and water
supply. We will also need to demonstrate leadership with respect to how we make
better decisions with regards to water utilisation and how we facilitate
investment and longer term planning to ensure that we use available water equitably
and wisely.
The harvesting and
controlled distribution of large volumes of water along the east side of the
main divide will be critical in this regard. There have already been good
examples of water schemes that harvest and farm water. The Opuha Scheme in South Canterbury
is one, and more recently the Central Plains Water Scheme in North Canterbury
which not only takes excessive run of river water when it can but also uses
Lake Coleridge as a water sink to ensure reliability of supply. These schemes
can guarantee water supply when it is needed and also support and encourage the
amelioration of environment damage that has been done in the past.
The Canterbury Water
Management Strategy (CWMS) has been a good model to manage water allocation and
utilisation to date but it is just at its beginning. The important thing about the
CWMS model is that it relies on input from right across various participants in
our community, all of whom have different requirements for the protection
and/or utilisation of water. It relies heavily on reaching a consensus with
regards to how water is allocated. That inevitably involves compromise, an
appreciation to think strategically and agree on what is the best outcome for
the wider community.
Our future is not about
putting unreasonable restrictions on water utilisation. It is much more about
sourcing water from where we can and utilising it in a way that does not
involve environmental degradation. That is possible with use of good technology,
sensible water management structures, strategic thinking and good leadership.
We can do that in Canterbury and we can lead the way for others to follow.
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