A damning review of Environment Canterbury (ECan) which recommends replacing the Council with a Commission for Water Management could prompt Government to investigate other regional authorities, says Federated Farmers.

But the review’s recommendations shouldn’t be implemented, at least, not immediately, says Mid Canterbury Feds president Michael Morrow.

“The report is really an indictment on the previous council leadership that led ECan into a strategic cul-de-sac… Going for a commission right now could actually stifle the tentative improvements we are seeing.”

To some extent Morrow’s reaction is echoed by the Green Party, which slams the report as “an attack on local democracy”.

“Key decisions about water management would be taken away from elected councillors and put in the hands of a new Government-appointed board,” warns party co-leader Russel Norman.

However, Norman goes further, suggesting a commission “could be abused by big dairy and commercial interests as an opportunity to ram through new irrigation projects without due process”.

Last week Norman continued that theme in a feisty parliamentary exchange with Prime Minister John Key.

He questioned the review’s impartiality given it was headed by Wyatt Creech, a director of Open Country Dairy, “a dairy company with 12 convictions for breaching the Resource Management Act in the last three years”.

Key defended Creech, a former National Party deputy prime minister, saying he was able to put aside private and personal interests.

He also brushed aside Norman’s suggestion that “Canterbury’s water resources are already under enormous pressure, that there is already over-extraction of water from aquifers and rivers, and that there is already enormous pollution as a result of dairy intensification”.

“I do agree that there is pressure on the aquifers in the Canterbury region. The way to resolve that is potentially to build greater water storage, so that less pressure is on those aquifers, and less of the water that currently pours out to sea continues to do so.

“Any increase in production in dairying would have to be matched by care and concern for the environment.”

Norman went on to accuse the Government of putting short-term private interests ahead of long-term public good, to which Key again played the water storage card.

“Firstly, it is because the Government takes a balanced view to economic growth and environmental issues. Secondly, putting it bluntly, if we build water storage capability, one would assume that it will be there for the long term and will take pressure off the aquifers.”