Dam lucky for Nelson Tasman

The Waimea Community Dam begins releasing more water into the river this week in a drought that would have caused the river to go dry at the Appleby bridge and industries to scale back significantly without the dam.

At Nelson Pine Industries, executive director and chief executive Kai O Kruse says the impact of the drought on production would have been substantial, with sales lost and employees working less hours.

“Whereas now in a drought, we’re able to do our normal level of production.”

The plant employs about 275 full-time-equivalent employees and has four times that benefit in the community through associated work such as trucking ,which he says would have felt the impact.

“The dam was expensive, but necessary for the region.”

A smaller dispersing fixed-cone valve began releasing water from the dam in early March and Waimea Water chief executive says it has been doing a good job by itself by keeping the Waimea River flowing at the required environmental levels and enabling water restrictions to be lifted in those areas benefiting from the recharged aquifers. This week the two larger valves will begin releasing water and he says they are designed to flush the river with a more significant amount of water.

“Before we opened the (smaller) valve we had pretty tough restrictions and it was about to get worse.”

Tasman District Councillor Kit Maling is part of the Dry Weather Task Force and he says “we would be in big trouble” without the dam this year as the region continues to evade rain.

While growers would be down to 30 per cent or less of their water allocation by now without the dam lifting river levels, he says Richmond would also be suffering.

“Richmond would be in a dire state and there could have been restrictions on businesses in the mall. People take water for granted until there isn’t enough. New Zealand as a country has plenty of water, but what we don’t do is store it enough.

“We took a lot of criticism for building this dam and the cost overrun was very painful. But you just have to look at our industries – they are all flourishing and they wouldn’t be able to operate without the dam. And they are big employers.”

Prior the dam releasing water for the first time in early March, water restrictions had been in place since late December in anticipation of the forecast dry weather, then ramped up to Phase E for residents in Richmond, Hope, Māpua/Ruby Bay and Redwood Valley. That meant water could only be used for essentials such as drinking, sanitation and stock.

While the dam is now releasing water and there are no longer water restrictions for those areas, plus Brightwater and Hope, it is a different story outside the dam’s recharge area. Wakefield is on Phase C water restrictions with water supplemented from the Brightwater supply and Eighty-Eight Valley is on Phase D due to extremely low levels of the Kainui Dam. The drought really hits home at Motupiko where a ‘cease take’ was imposed on consent holders on April Fool’s Day. The Wai-Iti zone has also had more restrictions imposed, moving to Stage 3, and Dovedale is on Phase D restrictions.

Despite the dam, nearly 30 per cent of irrigators on the Waimea Plains are moving back into water restrictions as the dry continues. Dry Water Task Force convenor, Kim Drummond, says unaffiliated users which are those landowners who did not purchase water shares in Waimea Irrigators Ltd, will move to Stage 1 which is a 20 per cent reduction. Unaffiliated users are mostly growers and a few farmers.

He says the data shows that unaffiliated users would have been subject to a ‘cease take’ a month ago if the dam had not begun to release water.