Water restrictions are kicking in for the Waimea Plains and areas such as Richmond, Mapua and Ruby Bay from 1 December.
Council notes the Waimea River has fallen to below the consultation trigger of 2,800 litres/sec and is currently running at 2,700 litres/sec and still dropping steadily. Aquifer levels across the district are much lower than last year and also trending downwards.
“The Waimea Plains have had less than 75 percent of normal rainfall for this time of the year and ground conditions are dry. The situation is better in other parts of the district but the Council will continue its monitoring and urges all rural and urban users to be conservative with their water use.”
Read full TDC news item
See current River Flow Measurements
Further links to Water Shortage Direction and General Water Saving Hints
Along with numerous other submitters MHRA presented their recent submission to the Waimea Dam funding consultation at a council hearing today. We presented the concerns of local residents about rates increases, perceived uneven distribution of benefits, and the overall affordability of the project.
Council took interest in our water supply survey and how we ran it.
Cr Norriss pointed out as a clarification on our wording regarding the Dovedale water scheme that any calculation of affordability of improving the scheme's source ($1.6M cost mentioned) is part of a closed account and thus of course not directly related to funding decisions of other projects such as the Waimea Dam.
These are the initial results of our survey on the issue of local water supply (after three weeks). For this survey we have been polling 600 households in the Moutere catchment, representing a population of approximately 1,500.
At the time of this evaluation, 12% of households polled have participated in the survey.
The purpose of the survey was to find out whether residents are satisfied with the current supply situation, what areas need to be improved, and whether there is interest in creating a new community-owned supply scheme as alternative to the Dovedale scheme. The survey also contained questions to indicate support or opposition to the Waimea Community Dam as currently proposed by TDC.
In his own submission to the current Waimea Dam consultation, local resident John Clifton presents his thoughts on what he thinks unfair and inequitable distribution of cost versus benefit in the current funding models.
His point is that by far the largest share of water is used by a relatively small number of commercial irrigators. As an alternative he suggests the introduction of a volume-related pricing structure for irrigation water which would:
Read John's full submission here.
Send comments to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
MHRA has issued a submission to the current consultation phase of the proposed Waimea Dam project.
We have focused on our objective to act as channel of communication between the community and TDC and have compiled feedback and concerns about the current proposal which we will present to council. In this submission we have used data from the initial results of our currently running survey on water supply.
"The MHRA submits that there are significant concerns among residents of the Moutere Hills area
about either funding model and the projected rates increase implied thereby, as well as about the
overall affordability of the dam and what is seen as uneven distribution of benefit. [...]
We submit that Council further investigate the level of popular support for the dam project, the
ability of the population to afford rates increases, and review the proposed funding models
accordingly in order to achieve a proposal with no or significantly reduced general rates impact. [...]"
Read the full submission here.