Scheme 'a cost to Wairau farmers'

Piggybacking on TrustPower's power-generation project rather than building their own irrigation scheme might cost Wairau Valley owners in the long run, Save the Wairau's lawyer has told the Environment Court.

The court is sitting in Blenheim to consider TrustPower's application for resource consent to build a hydro-electric power scheme in the Wairau Valley, after a Marlborough District Council-appointed panel's decision to give the scheme the green light was appealed. In September 2005, the Wairau Valley Water Enhancement Scheme was granted five-year resource consent to draw water from the Wairau River, to irrigate 5000 hectares of pasture. TrustPower applied for a consent lasting 10 years.

"Without TrustPower, farmers could have been irrigating each year since the scheme was built," said Mr Hardy-Jones, lawyer for Save the Wairau, which is fighting the electricity retail and generation company's proposal.

The scheme's chairman, Steve MacKenzie, told the court the cost to landowners of the standalone scheme would be more than $1000 a hectare, plus about $100/ha a year for maintenance. If TrustPower's scheme went ahead, the cost would fall below $100/ha covering pipeline easements, plus about $25/ha for annual maintenance.

"You realise that if TrustPower gets this consent, you could wait another 10 years while it is built," Mr Hardy-Jones said.

"Do you think your view might have been different if you realised you might not get water through the TrustPower scheme for some 14 years after it might have been available through the community scheme?"

Mr MacKenzie said that hypothetically he agreed with Mr Hardy-Jones that reaping the profits from 10 to 12 years of irrigation might have been better business than waiting for TrustPower, but the reality was that with primary industry being short of capital, many residents lacked the capital to build a standalone scheme.

"The people who were up for the money instructed us to take this course," he said. "From a personal point of view, I wouldn't be a farmer without irrigation in a dry area. But it wasn't my decision to make. It was the community's decision." Landowners with access to water, including several grapegrowers, had applied for and been granted interim consents to irrigate from the river, he said. These permits would be relinquished to TrustPower once the power scheme was up and running.

Earlier in the hearing, Fish & Game lawyer Marie Baker said that this arrangement gave "a big company like TrustPower the mechanism to be the adjudicator of water rights in the valley. If they go it alone and don't comply with (TrustPower's) conditions, you will oppose consent." In 2008, Mr MacKenzie applied for an additional water right within the TrustPower condition, then later that year sold his Birch Hill property for four times government valuation, which would not have been possible without the irrigation. He has since bought another property in the valley.

The joint scheme would offer reliable irrigation water to everyone in the valley, said Mr MacKenzie.

Some landowners were unable to access water, which excluded them from opportunities, such as contracts with vegetable processing company Talley's, which required irrigation.

The TrustPower scheme should result in power distribution to the Wairau Valley being upgraded, said Mr MacKenzie. For some years now, Marlborough Lines had denied connections in the valley, which had left irrigators with no alternative but to install diesel-powered pumps.

Mr MacKenzie has sought reassurance from TrustPower that its scheme would neither increase stream flows during floods nor decrease flows during drought, an issue he was satisfied had been addressed in the company's draft construction management plan.

Some landowners were concerned about under-runners and slips along part of the canal route, especially on terraces from Wairau Valley township to Centre Valley Stream. TrustPower would have to take steps to mitigate the effect of water on these soils, such as lining canals with impervious materials.

Mr MacKenzie earlier said a cost-benefit analysis contracted by TrustPower showed that if it took three years longer than the Wairau Valley group to build the scheme, the irrigation company would be better off funding its own project.

- The Marlborough Express

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