MEDIA STATEMENT

Waitaki consent applications notification decisions available

Environment Canterbury's commissioner, Peter Skelton, has released his decision on the notification status of 178 of more than 200 applications to take water in the Waitaki catchment. Most of the applications will be publicly notified.

Letters will be sent to applicants next week, and people can go straight to the ECan website - www.ecan.govt.nz/Resource+Consents/WaitakiConsents/

Broadly, the public notification decisions are to:

* Notify all applications to take water for agricultural and horticultural use above the Waitaki dam and in the Hakataramea Valley, because of potential adverse effects on water quality.

* Notify all applications to take water from the Waitaki River, including connected groundwater, due to special circumstances.

* Notify all applications to take water for agricultural and horticultural use between Waitaki Dam and Black Point due to special circumstances.

ECan director regulation Dr Mike Freeman said that an earlier indication from the commissioner that priority will be determined by notifiable date under the Waitaki Catchment Water Allocation Regional Plan, has been confirmed.

"What this means is that priority for each application is determined by the date it was deemed complete under the Waitaki Catchment Plan. This varies from application to application.”

ECan is likely to publicly notify the applications in newspapers and on its website in late July. Applications will be notified for 40 working days, an extended time period. This means people have 40 working days to make a submission on any of the notified applications.

"There are still a small number of applications in the Waitaki group that don't have notification decisions," Dr Freeman said. "Most of these have issues that are still being resolved. Recommendations on notification status will be passed to the commissioner as they are completed."

ENDS

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