First fire, now water crisis
Water is emerging as the biggest threat in the Tasman district as ‘‘desperate’’ growers face tougher water restrictions earlier than ever.
Most water permit holders on the Waimea Plains face a 65 per cent cut from Monday, which includes the Tasman District Council’s own allocation for its reticulated system that supplies several key urban areas, including Richmond.
Businesses connected to the council supply face a 25 per cent cut.
The financial impact on region of the big dry is expected to run into the millions, potentially outstripping the cost of the forest fire still burning in some of the hills and valleys around the plains.
Tasman district mayor Richard Kempthorne on Wednesday said the cost to the economy had been assessed at $100m from a
35 per cent water restriction, so a 65 per cent cut would be ‘‘significantly greater’’.
Appleby Fresh managing director Mark O’Connor said he had never faced a cut this large in his 20 years as a market gardener on the plains.
Yields were down by about a third already, with the company cutting back on planting varieties that had been grown in the nursery. ‘‘We’re certainly throwing a lot of plants out,’’ O’Connor said. ‘‘Say we’re doing cauli [cauliflower] – instead of planting 50,000, we’ll only plant 30,000.’’
Planted crops were surviving but ‘‘just sitting there’’ with leafy greens ‘‘pretty fragile in this weather’’.
‘‘A good 50mm’’ of rain was needed by next week to save those varieties, O’Connor said.
Dairy farmer Murray King said he had more options than most irrigators on the plains.
‘‘We only milk our cows once a day, we cull low-producing cows and we can buy in supplementary feed,’’ he said.
Horticulturists ‘‘don’t have any options’’.
‘‘It’s absolutely desperate for them,’’ King said. ‘‘If they don’t have a crop, they don’t have an income.’’
‘‘It’s absolutely desperate for them. If they don’t have a crop, they don’t have an income.’’ Dairy farmer Murray King of the situation facing horticulturists
King said it was infuriating that many landowners on the plains had been trying to get a water augmentation project in place for the past 20 years in preparation for such a drought.
‘‘The (Waimea) dam is under way but it’s just too slow,’’ King said.
‘‘Many of us are funding a water project with debt and don’t have access [to water] at the very time we need it. This should have been alleviated by now with the learnings of [the drought of] 2001.’’
Council Dry Weather Task Force convener Dennis Bush-King said a 65 per cent cut was announced in March during the big dry of 2001 but never came into force because it rained.
This year, it was still only February and no decent rainfall was expected. ‘‘Not in any forecast I’ve seen.’’
As well as the immediate effect on crops, the water restrictions would have many downstream consequences, affecting processing industries and employment, for instance.
Kempthorne called it an ‘‘extremely serious situation’’ particularly for horticulturists.
‘‘We’ve got a couple of dairy farmers but most of the land-based activity is horticulture and this is quite devastating for them,’’ the mayor said. ‘‘It’s likely to have a very severe financial implication for them and for their employees.’’
Bush-King said if no significant rain fell in the next couple of weeks, the council would be in ‘‘uncharted territory’’ and his approach would likely be for graduated reductions.
‘‘Next stop, an 80 per cent cut,’’ Bush-King said. ‘‘As and when we move to that depends on what happens with the salt [intrusion]. Salt levels have more than doubled over the last two weeks in one of our monitoring bores and others show signs of increasing salinity.’’
A higher tidal range was expected next week and the council was getting a bund installed in the Waimea River to try to hold back the salt water. It would also consider using emergency bores further up river within the next couple of weeks.
‘‘You don’t want to get salt into the aquifers,’’ Bush-King said. ‘‘You can’t put salt on to crops; you can’t drink salty water.’’