Nelson MP Nick Smith is urging the Nelson City Council to stop taking water from the Roding Dam and to take a "regional approach to water supply" while the Tasman District faces increasing demands on a dwindling water supply.
However, Nelson mayor Rachel Reese said the NCC has already stopped taking water from the Roding River due to the water levels and the council supported a joint regional approach to managing water.
"Primary industry users in the Waimea Plains are major contributors to the wider region’s economy, and so we are always open to discuss ways that we can help, especially when water supplies are running low."
Reese said she was unaware of any formal requests for the council to cease taking water from the Roding Dam and the Dry Weather Taskforce, a joint initiative between Tasman and Nelson councils, had not directed NCC to cease or reduce its take.
Smith was unaware the NCC had stopped taking water from the dam, saying it had only done so in the last day or two.
"The issue is that their resource consent says that they can take all of the water above 100 litres per second and the main reason they’ve stopped in the last two days is they’re down to that rather than through goodwill to their rural cousins."
He said he was monitoring the council’s water take from the Roding over the weekend and it would have taken more than 8 million litres of water a day.
"There is a level of concern from water users in the Waimea Plains that over recent weeks Nelson City Council have the choice to use the water from the Maitai Dam and chose to use the water from the Roding River, and that has not been taking the regional perspective."
He said he thought the NCC used the Roding water because it required less treatment, but said using the water treatment plant more often in dry periods was not too big of a task to help Nelson’s "country cousins".
"The problem is that the Roding flows into the Lee, then the Wairau and the Waimea system, and every litre taken is a litre less that can be used for maintaining our horticultural industries on the Waimea Plains."
Smith acknowledged NCC’s legal right to take the water from the dam, but said the ideal would be for the council to stop taking water from the Roding until the dry conditions on the Waimea subsided, even when there resource consent allowed for it.
Tasman District is facing stage one water restrictions with some takes on the Waimea Plains reaching stage two. This means its water use will be cut by 35 per cent.
Smith said the dry year highlighted the need for Nelson and Tasman water storage.
"I remain a strong supporter of the Tasman Council’s Waimea Community Dam and I am working to help secure government funding to enable it to proceed. However, in the meantime we need to use our existing resources as collectively as possible to try and get through this season as best we can."
Tasman District Council environmental information manager Rob Smith said although any extra water running down the Waimea River benefited the region, the extra water from the Roding Dam was not significant.
"There is an influence on the river but as a proportion of the whole, it’s only 10 per cent of the whole flow at the moment and normally it’s a much smaller percentage because there is normally much more water in the river. So at this time there is an influence, but I certainly couldn’t say it is significant."
He said Nelson City Council had been meeting the minimum flow level that it was required to stick to and he guessed it had stopped using the dam because the water level had dropped.
Smith is facilitating a meeting between the Nelson and Tasman councils on Friday to discuss the issue and he said he hoped "common sense will prevail".
– The Nelson Mail