Society Fears Harm To Fish

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32265, 7 April 1970, Page 14

Society Fears Harm To Fish

Reclamation schemes and drainage programmes had brought damage to fish and wildlife stocks and habitat, and efforts to compensate for these losses were timeconsumirig and costly, the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society said in submissions to the irrigation committee of the Water Allocation Council yesterday.

The secretary of the society, Mr H. B. Barker, said that applications for the extraction of water for irrigation and other purposes in many cases made more than the total flow in dry periods. Substantial reductions in stream flows resulted In an increase in water temperature

which harmed fish and frequently left depth insufficient for fish to reach their spawning beds in the upper limits of tbe waterways and the return to the sea of migratory fry and smolts as well as adult fish. Field staff had then to work around-the-clock to salvage fish left in boles and pools in riverbeds. If irrigation projects were to be instituted which aggravated tbe situation the cost of salvage work should be.borne by those who benefited from the schemes. The society recommended that a reversal of catchment board policy in straightening out streams and draining land should be urgently considered. It was obvious that

the ever increasing demands for water and complaints of local wells drying up were the product of efforts to drain water from the land into the sea as quickly as possible. Every attempt should be made to increase the natural low water flows in streams and rivers so that problems of pollution of these waters were kept down. Questioned about the level of water they would like to see maintained in the Waimakariri River, Mr P. C. Daw-

son, chairman of the society’s water conservation and water pollution committee, said that they bad estimated the flow at the gorge in February this year at 1200 cusecs; they would Hke to see it maintained at 1600 cusecs.