Canterbury council's freshwater management challenged in court
The Environmental Law Initiative wants a rule in the regional plan which allows certain farming discharges as a permitted activity to be quashed. File photo.
Photo:
RNZ / Nate McKinnon
The first of two back-to-back court cases challenging the Canterbury regional council's freshwater management begins at the Christchurch High Court today.
The Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) will ask the court to quash a rule in the regional plan which allows certain farming discharges as a permitted activity.
Senior researcher Anna Sintenie said ELI will argue the rule - which allows the discharge of nutrients onto or into land to be a permitted activity in some circumstances, but can result in contaminants entering water - breaches the Resource Management Act.
She said the council should be protecting the health of Canterbury's waterways and people for generations to come, but has instead been "illegally permissive" of activities that have led to significant pollution.
The organisations will be back in the High Court the following week, as ELI seeks to have a consent for the Mayfield Hinds Valetta (MHV) irrigation scheme
deemed unlawful
.
In 2021, the council granted MHV Water Ltd a consent to discharge nitrogen over more than 58,000 hectares in the Hinds/Hekeao Plains.
Sintenie said the organisation is seeking a similar outcome as they won in 2024, when the court found the council had unlawfully granted a resource consent for the neighbouring Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation Ltd irrigation scheme (ALIL), and
quashed the consent
.
The regional council and ALIL have appealed the decision.
She said in the wake of the court's findings in the ALIL case - that the council's decision to grant the discharge consent breached the RMA, and that the council had failed to consider other relevant policies requiring it to avoid adverse effects on indigenous biodiversity and the "natural character" of coastal and freshwater environment - ELI took another look at the council's water management and protection.
The group will also argue the council failed to consider the potential impacts on local drinking water supplies, and should have notified the community.
It was just down to the court's timetabling that the cases had been scheduled back to back, Sintinie said.
But it was no coincidence the organisation was scrutinising the Canterbury Regional Council's decison-making, consent management and protection of freshwater.
"We've had a focus on water quality outcomes in Canterbury because we can see there's a significant nitrogen pollution issue in the region.
"We believe in this context of significant pollution, there's a high responsibility on ECan [the regional council] to be sure it's properly managing these issues."
The majority of the country's freshwater is located in Canterbury (about 70 percent), as is the bulk of the nation's irrigated land.
The council declined to comment while the cases were before the court.
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