Key coy on ECan's future

Prime Minister John Key appears to be distancing the Government from radical plans to scrap Canterbury's regional council and install a new water authority.

Key also would not comment on the possibility of removing the covenants protecting some Canterbury rivers from being diverted for irrigation.

A damning report into Environment Canterbury's (ECan) performance by former National Party deputy prime minister Wyatt Creech has recommended it be disestablished immediately, and its functions replaced by a group of commissioners.

The Creech Report also recommends that a new Canterbury territorial water authority be established – made up of government appointees – to handle all resource consents for water.

ECan chairman Alec Neill, himself a former National MP, said yesterday that he expected commissioners would be installed and there would be no ECan elections this October.

However, Key told reporters at yesterday's post-Cabinet news conference that he was reluctant to make such a major call without a review of water-rights allocations throughout the country.

"It's no secret that we want water to be allocated in a more efficient way. I made that clear in my opening to Parliament," Key said.

"Whether that would lead us to set up a completely separate body, as the report recommends, and then leave one part of ECan, is a completely other step.

"And if we were going to do that, why would we just do that in Christchurch, certainly when we are considering an EPA [Environmental Protection Authority] and the like?

"But I do want to see that situation resolved in Christchurch because I do want to see us irrigating more of the Canterbury plains."

Key said he would need to be convinced that removing democratically elected councillors was in the region's best interests.

However, he was interested in other ways that the region's water resource could be exploited.

"Anyone who knows the Canterbury region well will tell you that rivers like the Avon are starting to run dry. And that's because of the pressure on the aquifers from people drawing water from the water table," Key said.

"Let's see how it would be structured, but it's not impossible to believe that you could use and properly store some water, send less of it out to sea, and take some pressure off the aquifer to irrigate more of the Canterbury plains."

Asked how that could be done with covenants on many major South Island rivers, Key said that was an issue that would have to be resolved. Asked if he was proposing to remove the covenants, Key said: "That's not my decision at the moment. I support greater irrigation in the South Island. How it's achieved is a matter for others."

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