Is the future of Canterbury as a pastoral wonderland, its farms operating under audited environment plans, native wildlife returning to the edges? Or is another future possible?

As global demand for clean water grows, should Canterbury rethink how it makes money from one of its greatest natural resources - water? John McCrone reports.

And still it rolls on, that great lumbering beast that is the issue of water in Canterbury.

My back is aching already at the prospect of a day in an airless lecture theatre, listening to scientists and policy-makers talking about "Our Vital Resource".

The New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science has organised a conference at Lincoln University to provide a snapshot of where the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) is at. Some 13 speakers to plough through.

As a political process, the CWMS has been cranking along for a decade now. Surely there isn't much to add that hasn't been heard a hundred times before?

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​Well, that idea goes in the bin as soon as Ngāi Tahu elder, Sir Tipene O'Regan, takes the floor, leaning on his elaborately-carved tokotoko, to deliver a bit of a self-confessed "rant" to a Pākehā​ and farmer-dominated audience.

But the day starts off on a more predictable track.

Opening the show, Tom Lambie – Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillor, former Federated Farmers president and Pleasant Point organic dairy farmer – begins by giving a pat on the back for all the CWMS has achieved thus far.

After the irrigation free-for-all of the 2000s – the groundwater grab – ECan has now created a set of rules around water quality and quantity, he says. And just as importantly, the ability to model the environmental impact of individual farms has also been put into place.

So broadly speaking, the talking part is done, says Lambie. The CWMS is moving into its operational phase of hitting its targets and tightening up agricultural practices as required.

"Every river in Canterbury has a plan," he says happily, flashing up the latest chart of the region's six alpine rivers, together with their interlinking canal systems and storage ponds.

SUPPLIED Making it better: Riparian planting would bring native wildlife to the edge of every field.

Lambie says the CWMS has been an all-consuming project for Canterbury with every section of society being involved through its uniquely collaborative and community-led process.

And farming culture itself has changed because it has taken ownership of the environmental goals being set.

"The great thing we are getting from farmers is they're seeing this as about continuous improvement. They're saying, 'If I've got a B, I want an A.' "

So pats on the back all around. The next priority is biodiversity, Lambie says. "We need to re-green Canterbury." In the coming year or so, this will be a focus.

Lambie says a big achievement is the rules requiring the fencing off of larger streams to prevent stock intrusion. However a step beyond that would be a mass programme of riparian planting – protective vegetation along every trickle and gully.

It is the ecologically smart way to suck up fertiliser and run-off before it enters the waterways.

With a changed government, there isn't going to be the funding to support the building of further large irrigation schemes in Canterbury. But Lambie points out there is going to be cash attached to its grand carbon promise of "planting a billion trees".

Time to lobby for a slice of that, he suggests brightly. "The biggest thing we can do in the next 10 to 15 years is really concentrate on changing how we manage what grows beside our waterways."

So the future seems clear and agreed – Canterbury as a pastoral wonderland, its plains tidily plumbed, its farms operating under audited environment plans, native wildlife returning to the edges of the fields.

The prosperous settler vision for the province, in short.

What else would we be doing, replies Lambie, when questioned by the audience. "We have a temperate climate. We grow grass incredibly well. Canterbury is lucky because it's a big area of flat land."

With the CWMS in place, the goals set out to 2040, it seems largely a matter of marching on towards that familiar – just much greener – landscape shaped by sheep, cows and crops.

SOUTH ISLAND - AN ENGINE FOR WATER PRODUCTION

Right. Not so fast. As Lambie retakes his seat, O'Regan steps forward to suggest quite another.

"At the moment we are following – if one might put it crudely – you lot," he rumbles. Yet Ngāi Tahu has been looking at this same landscape and other futures can be envisaged.

O'Regan's thesis turns out to be that two things must be considered. The first is the entire South Island – and essentially what it can sell is water.

Then second, when it comes to strategies, is that 2040 is the short-term view. The CWMS needs to be looking ahead to the century's end, by which time global warming and sea-level rise will have changed the game radically.

O'Regan says as a blade of rock poking up out of the Pacific, trapping every passing rain cloud, the South Island is a natural freshwater harvester.

"The greatest thing about this island is that it's an engine for the production of water. The fuel of that engine is the westerly wind when it hits the mountains – and even more will be falling on the Main Divide with climate change."

O'Regan says take the current Chinese water bottling controversy. Then fast-forward that another 50 years or so.

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF Building the vision: ECan's Tom Lambie (left) talking about the merits of irrigation at the Opuha Dam in South Canterbury.

It is easy to see clean freshwater is going to be an increasingly scarce commodity in the world. And even now, that fact is questioning the economics of what we are doing.

"It takes 40 litres of water to produce 1l of milk. We take that 1l, drain all the water out of it, and sell it as powder. Yet the export value of the water itself is vastly greater than that of the milk powder. We can't seem to be able to get our heads around the fact."

If water is the actual marketable asset, then trapping it, storing it, and selling it in bulk, ought to be a big part of a strategy like the CWMS.

O'Regan says imagine New Zealand still had Ministry of Works engineers like it did in the 1930s. It would be laying plans with greater ambition.

"The West Coast just pours itself out into the Tasman Sea." While elsewhere there are cities like Adelaide, where the ground water is turning saline. How long before there is a lucrative tanker trade with New Zealand as a straight water exporter?

O'Regan says there is no lack of supply on the east coast of New Zealand either. For all the alpine snowmelt that chugs down Canterbury's braided rivers, far more sluices straight out to sea unseen from its gravel aquifers.

"The Waimakariri – if we're to believe Niwa – comprises 8 per cent of the water that falls on its catchment. The balance flows out [underground] and bubbles up 8km out in Pegasus Bay."

O'Regan says this is a story from Napier to Foveaux Strait. Trillions of litres of uncontested ground water disappearing to sea without trace.

A FUTURE IN SMOKED EEL

What it all means is another question, he agrees. But the South Island could do with reconsidering the business it is actually in.

Then the other way the CWMS seems rather tunnel vision is climate change and sea level rise. O'Regan says think about how that will inevitably return much of the South Island coastline to a state better remembered by Māori.

A good stretch of the flat and fertile land that Lambie celebrates as a natural Canterbury asset was in fact reclaimed by draining lagoons like Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere, O'Regan says.

"My Ngāi Tahu tūpuna came here to a place which was dominated on the eastern seaboard by large and extraordinarily productive estuaries."

Well, the tide will be coming back in and wanting that land back, he says. "Some of the predictions I've seen say the new coastline will be somewhere near West Melton."

Perhaps extreme. But a primary production strategy for Canterbury ought to be thinking about what that will mean – and indeed how it might be a new kind of opportunity.

"Fish farming on the coast is potentially a huge benefit from rising sea levels," points out O'Regan. Both Te Waihora and the Christchurch estuary could once again be the real protein factories of the region.

"The Northern Hemisphere has destroyed its eel fisheries. And so I can get more for a kilo of smoked eel than you'll ever get for a kilo of orange roughy. Vastly more."

It might not be traditional agriculture – for Pākehā at least. But O'Regan says by the end of the century, Canterbury may depend on a CWMS more attuned to the needs of growing mahinga kai.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF Leaning on his tokotoko: Ngāi Tahu's Sir Tipene O'Regan (centre) knows how to stir up a good debate.

"Canterbury and Christchurch were huge productive swamps with people essentially living on islands within them." Nature may end up pushing the landscape back that way again.

So delivering on the pastoral dream is one thing, says O'Regan. However the change after that looks to be looming already.

WHO OWNS THE WATER?

Morning tea break offers a short chance to catch up with some of the speakers. Chatting with O'Regan, he admits he was rehearsing for another political argument – the Treaty claims Māori might have with regard to freshwater.

If the future of the South Island is water itself – the royalties and property rights that might flow from recognised ownership of it – then this becomes another thorny issue which needs settling before moving on.

It has been a problem for the CWMS, blocking what might have otherwise been sensible plans for upfront water trading among farmers.

The last National government stonewalled any Treaty claim, saying no-one owns water. New Zealand First also made that part of its coalition deal.

But pressure is building for Environment Minister David Parker to find some acceptable compromise, otherwise it could be heading for a messy court battle.

O'Regan says his own view is that it doesn't have to become another Treaty "rent squabble". It is changing strategic thinking that matters.

"What I'm worried about is transforming our use of water, not necessarily who gets the benefit."

An urgent ringing bell tells us it's time to get back to the conference – and probably back on script, so far as the immediate question of where Canterbury's water is at.

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF Another Canterbury: Eeling at Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere could once again become a thriving protein export.

Mark Fitzpatrick, environmental manager for fertiliser co-operative Ravensdown, says farmers are now operating in a realm of "level 4" uncertainty. Off the known map.

Fitzpatrick says the CWMS is essentially open-ended. The rules around nutrient limits and water takes can be continually tightened.

Once you can measure something you can control it. And so having entered an era of individual farm environment plans, the bar can be raised as high as public opinion demands.

The rules this week could be different next week, Fitzpatrick says. And that uncertainty comes on top of all the usual ones about the weather, exchange rates and overseas markets.

"I would argue we live in a world of total true ambiguity right now," he says. But he adds the only realistic choice for farmers is to embrace environmental responsibility – take control by being ahead of the game.

"Seek to own the story and go far beyond just compliance. Shift up to that world of operational excellence. Be ambitious and proactive," Fitzpatrick urges.

MOVING TARGETS AND UNFINISHED BUSINESS

It is a beast with an ever-expanding maw. ECan's director of science, Stefanie Rixecker﻿, speaks to the scale of the machine.

"There are 147 individual targets inside the CWMS." All of them tunable, she says. If on-farm practices aren't tracking towards the desired environmental outcomes, the feedback loops are built in to up the game.

Rixecker says on the practical front, there are a couple of major catchment-level plans to finalise by the end of 2018. The Waimakariri and Orari Temuka Opihi Pareora water zone chapters are still to be added to the CWMS.

ECan is also waiting to see which way the new Government goes on its National Policy Statement for freshwater, the document which sets New Zealand's general goals for water quality.

If the coalition partners decide to tighten up there – as is likely – then that again has to factor into the CWMS' local target setting.

CLIMATE CHANGE WILL DRIVE NEED TO STORE WATER

John Bright, of irrigation consultant Aqualinc Research, continues with the outlining of next step issues.

Echoing O'Regan, Bright says 62 billion cubic metres (cumecs) of water flows across the Canterbury plains each year. Only 4.4b gets taken for irrigation, another 1.7b for stock watering.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF CWMS is an open-ended process: Rules around nutrient limits and water takes can be continually tightened.

Bright says the reality is that Canterbury still depends on tapping its groundwater, its aquifers. The CWMS hasn't built the large-scale dams that could trap enough alpine water to replace that.

Public opinion has been against big storage schemes. However climate change is going to both increase the available alpine flow and hammer ground water levels due to evaporation, he says.

"I'm saying it's time we looked again at that need for storage and how to meet it." The logic is dams will have to find their way back on to the CWMS agenda, Bright believes.

So the beast is rolling on. It might fade into the background of Canterbury politics from time to time, but as a process, it continues to develop and expand.