Otago’s simmering water wars bubble towards boiling point

It was a showdown with a reasonably predictable outcome.
Five Otago regional councillors called an extraordinary meeting, held last Friday, and sprang a surprise vote in the hope of halting progress on a water plan opposed by many in the farming community.
But seven other councillors, including chair Gretchen Robertson, held firm, defying a “strong recommendation” from Environment Minister Penny Simmonds, and sending the council hurtling towards a controversial decision next month.
Last week’s extraordinary meeting was called by Moeraki councillor Kevin Malcolm, Kate Wilson, of Molyneux, former chair Andrew Noone, of Dunedin, and Dunstan pair Michael Laws and Gary Kelliher. They wanted to hear details of a meeting in Wellington, the week before, between council representatives, Simmonds and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay.
Since the new Government was formed late last year, ministers have been warning the council not to notify what’s formally known as the land and water regional plan – initially by the end of June, but now in October. (The plan provides comprehensive directions designed to improve water quality and ecosystem health, with some rules and regulations applying to the whole province, and some within specific catchments.)
That’s because the Government was yet to alter a key instrument that feeds into the water plan: the national policy statement for freshwater management.
About half an hour into last Friday’s regional council meeting, Malcolm, who lives in the Waitaki area and is a small shareholder in Lower Waitaki Irrigation Company, detailed why he’d called for work on the draft water plan to be suspended immediately. His explanation prompted heckling from the public gallery.
“We’ve had a clear instruction from the minister that we stop our process while they are reviewing and refreshing the key policies that directly affect our land and water regional plan,” Malcolm said.
“They will not be giving us a free environmental pass – that is certainly not the intent of their direction. This is about getting New Zealand moving, and getting New Zealand going in the right direction.”
Leaving aside a regional councillor embracing what sounded like a general election campaign slogan, have ministers really issued instructions or directions?
We asked Federated Farmers’ Otago president Luke Kane, who said: “My understanding is the directive from the environment minister was a directive.”
Environmental Defence Society chief executive Gary Taylor agreed, and said the minister had stepped over the line. “The regional council would be well advised to focus on its legal responsibilities, and not take notice of unlawful directions from ministers.”
(In January, Taylor wrote to Robertson and Otago Regional Council chief executive Richard Saunders stating that irrespective of the Government extending the deadline for councils to notify water plans until the end of 2027, the Resource Management Act says regional councils must give effect to national policy statements “as soon as reasonably practicable”.)
At last Friday’s meeting, regional councillor Tim Mepham, a Dunedin accountant, conjured up the Back to the Future movies, saying: “This Minister for the Environment is acting like Biff Tannen, and acting like a bully.”
However, regional council chair Robertson said Simmonds hadn’t ordered a halt.
Ministers had said councils could continue to develop plans, and work on regionally specific issues, Robertson said – but they were “strongly encouraged” to pause work while the Government reviewed the way freshwater was managed.
“The overwhelming, clear message is pause,” council boss Saunders told the meeting. “It’s been consistent.”
Minister Simmonds herself disagreed with regional councillor Malcolm’s description of her issuing a “clear instruction”.  
“I have not directed ORC to pause the notification of its land and water plan,” she told Newsroom.
“When to progress or delay plan development is ultimately a decision for each council to make, and I am sure councillors will be carefully weighing the costs and benefits.
“In the meantime, the deadline for councils to notify their freshwater plan changes has been extended by an extra three years, to December 31, 2027, and it would be sensible for councils to give themselves the extra time to fully consider the changes that the Government will be bringing in, to avoid unnecessary costs and compliance duplication for ratepayers.”     
The regional council has – in part, because of its own failures – been put through the ringer over water in recent years.
A new water plan began to be developed in 2019, about the same time as the Labour-led government embarked on an overhaul of water regulations, including a new national policy statement on freshwater management which changed the balance towards the environment.
(An Otago regional council report from February of this year, summarising “proposed target attributes” for water contaminants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, E.coli and sediment, all catchments had “at least one category with either high non-compliance or multiple degrading trends indicating improvement is required”. Another report, from 2018, said the overall health of 40 percent of the province’s water bodies was rated “poor” or “fair”.)
The prospect of tighter rules to improve water quality – such as bigger setbacks from waterbodies on some farms, potential limits on cow numbers per hectare, and restrictions on fertiliser use – delighted environmentalists but sent a shudder down the spines of farmers, who worried about the economic damage.
In May 2019, then environment minister David Parker launched an investigation into the council’s handling of water – in particular, the replacement of water permits related to 19th-century mining operations. Independent investigator Professor Peter Skelton found Otago’s water plan substandard.
The pressure told.
Former environment minister Marian Hobbs was rolled as chair in 2020. She later resigned after signing a petition calling on Parker to sack councillors and install commissioners.
All the while, action on water was delayed – including the setting of minimum flows for the Manuherikia River. Several new Dunedin councillors were elected in 2022, introducing the division of seven councillors against five.
Last year ushered in a change of central Government, and a change of direction, with Simmonds’ coalition promising reviews of freshwater management and the Resource Management Act (RMA).
While Simmonds, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay warned the Otago Regional Council to delay notifying its plan, it dug in its heels. Hence the meeting with ministers on September 12 in Wellington, and last week’s extraordinary council meeting.
The arguments on both sides of the regional council table appear to coalesce around costs, certainty and integrity.
Former chair Andrew Noone, a Waikouaiti sheep and beef farmer, told the extraordinary meeting everyone wanted clean and swimmable water, but “we also want sustainable, resilient communities”. The biggest risk, he said, was “uncertainty for all”.
The draft water plan needed more work, he said, to iron out what he called impractical provisions – provisions that are “extremely challengeable” in court. Halting work, and allowing extra work to be done before notifying, would reduce the cost of legal challenges, Noone said.
Molyneux councillor Kate Wilson, a farmer in Middlemarch, said the draft plan gave no certainty. “As acknowledged by staff a number of times, it’s going to keep on needing changes because it isn’t complete, the science hasn’t been done, there is a whole lot of work still to be done.”
Meanwhile, Kevin Malcolm said a pause would be good for the community, and the regional council’s integrity.
In their Wellington meeting, ministers Simmonds and McClay said the Government was willing to work with the regional council to resolve specific issues “should the plan not be notified”. Council boss Saunders wrote: “No details were discussed about what these things may be.”
In a second paper to last week’s meeting, Saunders outlined what those issues could be – two bespoke changes to the existing plan, known as plan changes 6AA and 7. The Government could either change the law or provide financial support, Saunders suggested – with the latter estimated to be $4.7 million over two years.
Ten councillors voted in favour of staff discussing potential help with government officials.
Earlier at the extraordinary meeting, Dunstan councillor Alexa Forbes, a Queenstown artist and academic, said the council had spent $18m – “and countless hours” – developing the draft water plan, as directed by the previous government and requested by the community.
Yet it was now being asked to pause because of vague new ideas, that would only become clear in the middle of next year. The council should notify the plan, and iron out any unworkable parts through the extensive process, including public consultation.
“We must continue; the current law obliges us to do so.”
Dunedin’s Alan Somerville, a retired early childhood teacher, was more combative.
“It’s time to call out this nonsense from Government. Our government leaders have signalled on many occasions that they believe in local decision-making. Well here’s local decision-making after years of work by the ORC. Let’s get on with doing our job for the environment and communities of Otago.”
The new plan would provide certainty for farmers and businesses, he said, enabling them to make decisions about their activities and investments. The council needed to make decisions to prevent further degradation of freshwater, and start making improvements, he said.
Any changes would have long lead-in times, Somerville said. The plan had been improved already, and further changes were possible, including taking note of any new national policy statements.
(In a letter to Simmonds on September 5, regional council chair Robertson said: “There will be ample opportunities as the plan moves through its submission and hearing stages over the following 24 months for us to respond to any changes in national direction.”)
Somerville said: “Governments come and go, and governments will continue to make changes to national policy statements and other documents. If regional councils always wait for the next change they will never renew their plans.”
Let’s widen the lens to the meeting’s interested observers.
Kane, the Federated Farmers’ Otago president, is a dairy and beef farmer in West Otago, a fourth-generation farmer whose family’s roots to the land date back to 1929. He wanted a delay in notifying the plan, and describes the councillors’ vote last week as “almost embarrassing”.
A pause would allow the plan to be adjusted once a review of environmental bottom lines for waterways had been completed, he says. “That would be a damn sight cheaper option than us going to Environment Court and repeating the same process.”
Isn’t a seven-to-five voting split just democracy at work, we ask?
“Those seven councillors haven’t been to my place, haven’t been to my farm,” he says, adding one has been to a watercare meeting. “But it’s having that understanding of what is genuinely happening. The industry has changed a long way in the last 10-15 years.”
Taylor, the Environmental Defence Society boss, says he’s disappointed the regional council is discussing taking Government help if it doesn’t notify the plan. He calls it a bailout.
“The focus here needs to be on the rule of law, what the council’s responsibilities are, and they are very clear.”
Environmental reporting and science shows Otago has serious water quality problems, Taylor says. “The vast majority of Otago residents, including those in the farming community, know that there’s an issue and it has to be addressed.”
(Robertson told Simmonds earlier this month: “Freshwater quality was the highest environmental concern in a recent survey of Otago residents.”)
Harking back to his letter to the regional council in January, Taylor says Otago’s water concerns need to be addressed as soon as practicable.
“The sooner the council gets this plan underway the better. And, of course, once it does there will be plenty of opportunity for people to submit and make comments, and for it to be modified, if necessary.”
The next chapter in Otago’s water wars is about to be written.
The final draft is scheduled to come to the council meeting on October 23. It’ll be the culmination of five years’ work, after three public consultation stages, and staff and councillors having weighed more than 1000 pieces of feedback.
At next month’s meeting, councillors will be asked to formally notify the plan. Barring Government intervention, or an unanticipated change of heart, it seems the likely vote is seven-to-five.