Otago Regional Councillor Gary Kelliher has compared the proposed Land and Water Regional Plan as “a sales brochure for a new Ferrari that delivers a broken down Mini that is costing ratepayers a fortune."

He then told the council meeting yesterday that farmers and foresters should stop all of their good environmental work and save that money for lawyers' fees to fight the plan.

Despite his analogy, Otago Regional councillors voted 7-5 to send Minister for the Environment Penny Simmonds an outline of costs, benefits and implications of notifying the Land and Water Regional Plan before the National Policy Statement on fresh water was released.

Chief executive Richard Saunders told the meeting, staff were well aware of the strong differences in opinion around the table, but were not pushing their own agenda, “and it's wrong and inflammatory to suggest staff are doing that.”

Cr Michael Laws then questioned him about the contents of the letter, implying that some of the statements were clearly subjective, and based on a judgement.

“So who made those?” he asked, with which Richard replied that it was staff who gave their expert opinion to discuss as a draft at the council meeting.

Contents of the letter outlined that while some areas of Otago have improving water quality trends, many were degrading, including the lower Manuherekia River, with nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment and E.Coli levels measuring below the bottom line.

However, the letter did say that there were improving trends in the river quality due to significant on farm effort. 

Cr’s Laws and Kelliher believe the degradation of the river was questionable.

In terms of water quantity, many catchments in Otago also had a medium to high ecological risk as a result of water abstraction. 

The ORC said historical consenting of stored water has resulted in poor structuring of water allocation and low levels of water efficiency.

Since 2018, the Otago Regional Council has invested around $18 million on science, monitoring and policy work to support the development of the new planning framework. 

That included around $2 million which has been spent on developing a minimum flow for the Manuherekia catchment. 

ORC chair Gretchen Robertson said despite the opposition around the table, they didn’t have a choice about sending the letter to the Environment Minister - “we have been directed to do this.”