Forest & Bird questions water process
Conservation organisation Forest & Bird has challenged Environment Canterbury’s claim that all farmers illegally taking Canterbury water have now adhered to the rules.
Ecan had planned to publish non-compliant water users on its website at the start of the week but said to The Press this was now unnecessary as all offenders had complied.
Forest & Bird said it had received the same response but challenged ECan which had admitted to issuing 60 abatement notices and three infringements.
‘‘ECan then said processing abatements and infringements would be wrapped up by the beginning of September and we were happy to give them the benefit of the doubt until we found out they had given The Press the same incorrect information,’’ spokeswoman Megan Hubscher said.
‘‘On the basis of our challenge, ECan accepted that its initial response was, in fact, incorrect and supplied new interim information saying it had issued 26 abatement notices, and still hadn’t finished processing all the consent holders,’’ she said.
In an email sent to Forest & Bird on Monday, ECan manager operational support Nadeine Dommisse admitted to still having 26 ‘‘live’’ abatement notices on the books issued within the timeframe from July 7 through to July 22, taking into account a 15-day appeal period.
ECan regional leader monitoring and compliance Richard Purdon said ECan had 45 abatement notices outstanding. ‘‘These are water users who have been instructed to put in water meters but haven’t complied,’’ he said.
‘‘Once they contact ECan with the date the water meter will be installed the date of noncompliance changes to the date of installation. So they are complying with the notice but not the regulation, until such time as the meter is up and running. They guarantee compliance by delivering by a fixed date.’’
He said the bulk of abatement notices had come back with dates, however, ECan had served six infringements for non-compliance. ‘‘We are not at the level of prosecution yet, but there are a couple out there we may have to take to court,’’ he said.
There are three levels of enforcement action - abatement, infringement, and prosecution.
In June, it was announced that hundreds of millions of litres of Canterbury’s water had been taken illegally as the extent of noncompliance among high-scale water users was revealed. Offenders received few fines and there were no prosecutions.
ECan was urged to take a harder stance and in a media statement on June 11 CEO Bill Bayfield indicated ECan would be following up on farmers without water meters, giving them 15 days to comply.
At the time Bayfield said the organisation was moving towards stricter enforcement measures for water-take consent breaches and the focus would be on cracking down on low flow breaches during times of water restriction, then dealing with breaches exceeding consented volumes.
In response to the public’s desire for more transparency, Bayfield said ECan would begin publishing abatement and infringement notices on the ECan website.
Forest & Bird said getting the correct information from ECan had been extremely frustrating.
‘‘At every turn, we have met with confused statements and misinformation.
‘‘This raises questions about the transparency and good faith of ECan.’’
ECan is preparing to publish details about two abatement notices on Monday, according to Purdon. The information will consist of essential details about live abatement notices. Abatement notice details will only be uploaded to the website once appeal periods have expired and they will be removed when cancelled due to compliance being achieved.