Making a submission on the Local Bill
How to make a Local Bill submission
An upcoming milestone to help us achieve regional water security for generations to come is the passing of the Tasman District Council (Waimea Water Augmentation Scheme) Bill.
This Local Bill was introduced to the House by Nelson MP Nick Smith. It is now at the Select Committee stage, with public submissions closing soon on Friday, 5 October.
To demonstrate the large amount of public support for the Waimea Community Dam, we encourage you to make a submission to this Bill. Your submission shouldn’t only say you support the Dam, it should include your views on what the Bill itself proposes, i.e.
The transfer to the Council 1.3516 hectares of riverbed on which the dam will be built, described as Section 1, Survey Office Plan 509793; and
The right to inundate 9.6690 hectares of conservation land, described as Section 10, Survey Office Plan 509793, about 1.6km in a direct line upstream from the dam in the Mount Richmond State Forest Park.
Read the full Tasman District Council (Waimea Water Augmentation Scheme) Bill here.
This is your opportunity to let the Select Committee know what you would like to see happen.
How to make a submission
Submissions don’t need to be too long! They can be just a few paragraphs if you like.
You can write your submission in a Word or PDF document and upload it to the Select Committee submission form here, or you write directly into the form.
Either way, here’s how to write a submission.
Head your submission with the name of the Governance and Administration Committee, and the full title of the bill.
Follow the website’s guidelines for submitting your personal details. It is important to not have them in the submission, otherwise your details will be released publicly on the Parliament website.
You need to make sure your submission is five things:
1. Relevant to the Bill – stay on topic
2. Clear – be clear about what you’re saying
3. Concise – be simple and direct
4. Accurate – include all relevant information. Make sure your facts are correct
5. Pointed – restate your recommendations or main points at the end of the submission.
You can ask to speak to your submission but that is not essential. Coordination of speakers to support submissions is currently being led by the CWS Advisory group. Contact Morgan Williams (E. morgan@futuresteps.co.nz – Ph. 021 410 043).
Here’s a submission example:
Please feel free to forward this to your friends and networks, so we can have as many voices as possible.
Local Bill Links
See the Tasman District Council (Waimea Water Augmentation Scheme) Bill here.
A full guide for making Select Committee submissions here.
More information about the Select Committee process here.
Water take rules are changing in November! Do you own water shares?
WIL has a word of caution for water users: the amount of water available to you is changing later this year. Without the Waimea Community Dam, in dry months it is highly likely landowners will have a cease take instruction. If the Waimea Community Dam moves forward but you don’t have water shares through WIL, you are also very likely to have a cease take instruction in dry months.
Starting November 2018 (under the with-Dam scenario), Step 2 restrictions (2,300 l/s at the Irvines/Wairoa Gorge recorder) will mean a 50 percent cut to water use and Step 3 restrictions will mean complete cease take for unaffiliated permit holders. Based on historical flow data, the Wairoa river falls to 2,300 l/s most years.
| Step 1 - Wairoa River < 2,750 I/s |
Step 2 - Wairoa River < 2,300 I/s |
Cease Take - Wairoa River < 2,050 I/s | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allocation after bona fide permit review (m3/week) | Allocation under 20% rationing (Allocation x 0.8) | Allocation under 50% rationing (Allocation x 0.5) | |
| 3,500 | 2,800 | 1,500 | 0 |
Of course, anyone with water shares can affiliate those shares to access water from the Dam. If you don’t yet own shares, consider the following:
How would last year’s ‘big dry’ have affected me if the pending rules had been in place?
One way to understand what may be in store is to cast your mind back to the end of last year – the ‘big dry.’ Water restrictions were in place throughout the region.
What if the new water take rules were in place during the big dry of 2017? See the figures below, which were presented to Tasman District Council's Environment and Planning Committee on 8 February.
Rationing was in effect for 28 days and irrigators were cut to 35% of their existing allocation for 14 of those days.
Under the new rules, the cut would have been 50% of the bona fide allocation for 19 days, for unaffiliated permit holders in a with-dam scenario. The flow at the Wairoa at Irvines gauging site was 2,200 l/s on 26th of December – had it dropped to < 2050 l/s a cease take would have been in place.
Without the dam, under the new rules all permit holders would have been cut to 50% of their bona fide allocation for 4 days.
Under the new rules, the takes can only recommence when the 7-day moving mean flow at the Wairoa at Irvines site rises above 6000 l/s. In other words, a substantial fresh (i.e. more than 10,000 l/s) would need to occur in the Waimea River before taking could resume.
| Option I - WITHOUT DAM |
|---|
| Wairoa at Irvines | No. of days below trigger flow | |
|---|---|---|
| Consultation | Days < 3000 I/s | 33 |
| Stage 1 (20% cut) | Days < 2750 I/s | 30 |
| Stage 2 (50% cut) | Days < 2300 I/s | 4 |
| Waimea at Appleby | No. of days below trigger flow | |
| Stage 4 (70% cut) | Days < 800 I/s | 0 |
| (minimum flow reached was 911 I/s) |
| Option 2 - WITH DAM (for non-affiliated consent holders) |
|---|
| Wairoa at Irvines | No. of days below trigger flow | |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 (20% cut) | Days < 2750 I/s | 30 |
| Stage 2 (50% cut) | Days < 2300 I/s | 19 |
| Cease Take (100% cut) | Days < 2050 I/s | 0 |
Risk and extreme events
We’ve recently experienced two extreme natural events.
Dr Morgan Williams, local Richmond resident and ex Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for 10 years, says that decades of research on our societal responses to the risks of extreme natural events is often to delay agreement on measures to reduce impacts.
We continue to see the risks of necessary actions as bigger than the outcomes of the natural events themselves, even when the risks they pose are large, systemic and intergenerational – thus affecting many parts of our society, economy, communities and business.
The common element is that the risks are something that is seen as ‘tomorrow’ (not our worry) and the solution has costs or risks that are perceived as bigger (in terms of likelihood or impact on our selves) than the much larger systemic risk needing our attention.
In simple terms this is at the heart of the debates about the Waimea Community Dam. The risks that the dam addresses (security of supply in droughts and maintenance of river flows) are large, systemic, infrequent (but likely to increase in severity), intergenerational and driven by the single biggest risk humanity faces – our changing climate.
SH6, Rocks Road – Nelson City Council Facebook page, 1 February 2018.
The global risks landscape
Extreme weather events top list of risks
What is the impact and likelihood of global risks? Cyclones Fehi and Gita were more evidence of our region’s changing climate: wetter wets, drier dries. The World Economic Forum recently shared a risk analysis that showed risks with the greatest likelihood and impact are extreme weather events. For Nelson Tasman, that means more flooding, droughts and coastal inundation with bigger storm surges.
These risks bring worldwide concern about the security of freshwater supplies. Read the full report here.