Brendon Burns

Imposing a moratorium on the Hurunui River until the next election is an inevitable response to growing public concerns about decreasing water quality in Canterbury, says Labour’s water spokesman Brendon Burns.

“Given that Environment Minister Nick Smith replaced elected ECan councillors with commissioners, he had little choice but to agree to their recommendations for a Hurunui moratorium until October next year,” Brendon Burns said.

“Dr Smith knows he has alienated thousands of Cantabrians by giving wide powers to his appointed commissioners, though he retains the ultimate authority to ignore them or replace them.

“People in Canterbury are concerned about increasing contamination of waterways from industrial agriculture. Water quality in the lower Hurunui is already so degraded as to be unsafe; the Commissioners had to act and Dr Smith had to support them, but we are a long way off being home and dry on this issue.”

Brendon Burns says Hurunui Water Project wanted to dam the south branch of the Hurunui River to irrigate 42,000 hectares. “Commissioners are charged with assessing this quadrupling of irrigation off the Hurunui at the same time as deciding whether to amend or extend the Water Conservation Order on the Hurunui River.

“Dr Smith is playing for time with the Hurunui moratorium which runs, conveniently, until around the time of next year’s election. Meantime, the Government is pressing ahead with its agenda which has the Prime Minister on record saying he wants water from new schemes flowing in Canterbury next year.

“If Dr Smith is serious about improving environmental outcomes he now needs to impose moratoria not just on depleted aquifers but on many other Canterbury rivers and streams until tough new environmental rules are in place.

“That, of course, would totally disrupt the Prime Minister’s growth agenda and projects such as Synlait’s expansion now it is being taken over.

“So a temporary reprieve for the Hurunui is not going to be followed by the wider response that is now needed across Canterbury,” Brendon Burns said.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Media Release. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.