Aquifer consent delays costing jobs
Acompany investing tens of millions of dollars in avocado orchards in the Far North says jobs are being lost and investment put at risk because Northland Regional Council is “dragging its heels” on water-use consents.
That is denied by the council, which says historical aquifer level errors and the Covid-19 crisis caused the delays, and that consent hearings will start late next month.
Ground water use has become a contentious issue in the Houhora area where 24 landowners have applied to take up to 6.4 million cubic metres a year from the Aupo¯ uri Aquifer.
A total of 113 submissions have been received with most opposed to increased water take.
The applications are from avocado growers who say the amount applied for is a fraction of the water entering the aquifer each year, and that converting pasture into orchards means many more jobs in the cashstrapped Far North.
One of the biggest investors is Mapua Orchards, which is developing more than 400ha around Houhora and Waiharara.
General manager Ian Broadhurst said the company had taken a multimillion-dollar leap of faith ahead of new water permits being granted but the council seemed intent on “dragging its heels”.
As the process dragged into its third year, orchards were renegotiating existing, smaller water consents to keep seedlings alive and cutting back expansion plans, he said.
Years’ worth of hydrological work had shown the requested water take was a fraction of aquifer recharge, and fell well within allocation levels allowed in the regional plan.
“We can’t do anything without water . . . This is holding up developments that are essentially shovel-ready. They could be generating jobs that are sorely needed in Northland, but instead they’re parked or being reconsidered due to unnecessary delays.”
Regional council consents manager Stuart Savill rejects the authority is “dragging its heels”.
The applications were received between February 2018 and August 2019, with submissions closing on November 1 last year.
Later that month the council discovered historic errors in its groundwater data — the water level under Houhora was 2.5m lower than previously thought — so bores had to be re-surveyed and models rerun with the new measurements.
The Covid-19 lockdown occurred during the same period, Savill said.
Two commissioners had been appointed to consider the evidence and make a decision. They would hear 53 oral submissions in Kaitaia from August 31 to September 4.
Northland businesses affected by the delays include Kaitaia-based Far North Roading, which has recently branched into avocado orchard development.
Managing director Manu Burkhardt-Macrae said the company would have to win other work or cut back its workforce of about 70 staff and 20 subcontractors if the delays continued.
Further afield, Lynwood Avocado Nursery in Whanga¯ rei had already lost orders for 30,000 trees because of delays in the consenting process, founder Stephen Wade said.
With each cloned tree fetching about $50, the financial implications were significant, and the company had already make five staff redundant due to the drop in orders.
The largest applicant in the
Aupo¯ uri Aquifer Water Users Group is Te Aupo¯ uri Commercial Development, the trading arm of Te Aupo¯ uri iwi, which has applied for an annual take of 1.17 million cu m to convert its 260ha beef farm into horticulture.
Those opposed to increased water take from the aquifer fear it could lead to salt water incursion, which would make bore water unusable.
Water campaigner Karyn NikoraKerr, of Ngataki, said the council shouldn’t even consider issuing new consents until the monitoring period for the last batch of consents was complete.
In 2018, the Environment Court gave approval to 17 landowners, known as the Motutangi-Waiharara Water Users Group, to take up to 2 million cu m a year from the aquifer.
However, the approval was subject to raft of conditions, which included monitoring salinity, groundwater levels and wetlands over a nine-year period, and the initial water take was set at 0.5 million cu m.
Nikora-Kerr said the council should have followed the Environment Court’s lead and rejected the latest application until the monitoring period for the Motutangi-Waiharara consents, which has another seven years to run, was complete.