Hydro plan strategy panned

A proposed multi-million dollar plan to transform Canterbury's Lake Coleridge for hydro power and irrigation storage could destroy the integrity of the Canterbury Water Management strategy, the Central South Island Fish and Game chief executive believes.

News that the Government is considering weakening the water conservation order on the Rakaia River to accommodate the plan was not well received yesterday by Fish and Game or the Green Party.

But Central South Island Fish and Game chief executive Jay Graybill said what disturbed him most was the possibility of the lake becoming a pilot scheme for Canterbury Water Management Strategy.

He said the principle of the strategy was parallel planning, which meant restoring the environment and improving efficiency was as important as providing infrastructure.

"The whole emphasis of the strategy was to bring those three planning threads forward together. If, in this process, they don't provide for those three goals, the integrity of the strategy is going to be lost."

He said the Lake Coleridge plan was advancing infrastructure only, without addressing restoration and efficiency.

A key finding from the mayoral forum was if current existing water takes were to achieve industry standard efficiency they would only need one third of the amount of storage.

Mr Graybill said improving efficiency would cost less than a new dam.

"Irrigators improving efficiency, or preserving outstanding efficiency of the Rakaia River also need to be talked about."

National Fish and Game Council chief executive Bryce Johnson said the Government was retreating from pre-election promises by considering weakening the conservation order on the Rakaia River.

Last year, in response to a series of pre-election questions posed to all political parties by Fish and Game, National said it had no plans to alter the status of water conservation orders.

Mr Johnson said Fish and Game had initiated most of the 15 existing water conservation orders. It received no taxpayer funding, and the considerable resources, time and funding required to be successful in the process had been supplied by anglers and hunters through their licence fees.

Opposition to water conservation orders came from a range of interests, was often intense, and required comprehensive, thorough, expensive research and legal representation.

"New Zealand's freshwater anglers and gamebird hunters are rightly proud of the successes they have achieved in protecting our rivers and lakes of special value," he said.

"They will see any government failure to uphold the protection of these special water bodies as an extremely serious threat and a retreat from pre-election promises."

Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman said scrapping water conservation orders would be the equivalent of scrapping national parks.

"There is no way this should be allowed to happen. Nor should the WCO mechanism be weakened. WCOs are the equivalent of National Parks for water bodies.

"They provide bottom line protection for some of our most beautiful wild waterways."

- © Fairfax NZ News