ES revives user-pays water proposal

BY SAM MCKNIGHT

Environment Southland has dusted off controversial plans to impose a user-pays charge for large-scale water users in the region.

It is the same proposal that drew fierce criticism from industry, councils and lobby groups, during the council's long-term council community plan process last year.

The plan is to shift some of the water resource monitoring costs away from the general ratepayer and on to the larger consumers of water, including irrigators, community water supplies, industries and dairy farms.

Council chief executive Ciaran Keogh said councillors signalled their intention to include the proposal in this year's draft annual plan at a workshop last week.

Despite the proposal being deferred last year, the council had always indicated it would be reintroduced in 2010, he said.

Money raised from the fee would be used to pay for a proportion of surface and groundwater investigations, monitoring and management, instead of being drawn from the general rates.

Last year Environment Southland was criticised by the Invercargill city and Southland district councils because they would have to offload the extra charges on to their ratepayers.

"Last time it probably wasn't very well communicated but we hope to do a better job this time," Mr Keogh said.

Environment Southland staff were already advising water users so councils could include the charge in their own annual planning, he said.

"We are all going through the same annual planning process, and they need to know as early as possible that they should provide for this in their own budgets."

The council had not yet considered how the charge would be set, but that would be determined this week, Mr Keogh said.

It was anticipated there would again be some negative responses to the proposal.

"You always do when you want to take money out of people's wallets", but it was important to get a better understanding of the resource and the environment without wrecking it, he said.

Strategic planning was needed to protect the resource for everyone, Mr Keogh said.

Federated Farmers Southland president Rod Pemberton, whose organisation was one of the loudest opponents of the charge last year, said the reintroduced proposal would not sit well with members.

"What it boils down to, is it is just another tax."

The entire community benefited from the use of the water and should share the costs accordingly, he said. There would be wider effects from the charge and parties involved would have to divert money from elsewhere, harming economic growth, Mr Pemberton said.

The reasons the council gave for the charge last year were insufficient and nothing had changed, he said.

He believes there will be significant opposition to the proposal.Details of the proposal would be confirmed this week before council's draft annual plan is released to the public next month.

- © Fairfax NZ News