Pumps set to revive irrigation scheme

STACY SQUIRES/The Press

WATER UPHILL: Ashburton Mayor Bede O'Malley, left, and Mike Kedian, of TrustPower, at the new pump house at Highbank.

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A "creative and clever" engineering feat has revived a struggling Mid-Canterbury irrigation scheme.

TrustPower is constructing a $15 millon pump house at the Highbank power station near Methven to allow the Barrhill-Chertsey irrigation scheme (BCI) to take water from the Rakaia River.

The pump house will be leased to BCI, which last year was unable to raise the $33m needed for its proposed scheme.

A revised scheme included a water race direct to farms, replacing the proposed 3.5km canal.

TrustPower generation manager Mike Kedian said water would be pumped up the Highbank penstock to flow along the Rangitata Diversion Race canals to irrigate about 17,600 hectares of farmland.

He believed pumping water back through the penstock was a New Zealand first.

"It has been a challenge, but through creative and clever engineering we have enabled this to happen," Kedian said.

The economic benefits would be "significant" for the region, he said.

Ashburton Mayor Bede O'Malley said the joint venture was "common sense".

"For the farmer, [the scheme] is an expensive exercise upfront, but sometimes it takes that leap of faith to get there," he said.

The pump house will initially house four onecubic metres a second pumps and could be expanded to eight pumps.

The irrigation scheme will run from September to May, when the Highbank power station does not operate.

- © Fairfax NZ News