Irrigation scheme to go ahead soon

Press, 13 November 1981, Page 15

Irrigation scheme to go ahead soon

Now that the Government has given approval for construction of the Balmoral irrigation scheme, the Ministry of Works and Development is planning for work to begin immediately on the project. Next Thursday at 3 p.m. at the proposed intake for the scheme on the Hurunui River in Balmoral Forest the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, will attend a ceremony to mark the beginning of construction of the scheme. ’ The new scheme, which is immediately south of the Waiau Plains scheme now under construction, will serve about 5500 hectares of country between the Pahau and Hurunui Rivers and north of the Balmoral Forest and west of the old Waiau branch railway line. There are about 25 farmers in the area and it is expected that about 80 per cent of the watering will be under the border dyke system with the balance by spray irrigation. Including both” on and off farm work, the estimated cost of the scheme was last month put at $10.2M. The District Commissioner of Works, Mr R. D. Grant, said this week that the first contract for lateral race No. 1 would be advertised on November 21. It was expected that the successful contractor would be known before Christmas so that he would be in a position to make an immediate start after the holidays. The cost of this particular work is expected to run into something like $200,000. In the meantime Mr Grant said that the Forest Service would be clearing the line for the main race through the Balmoral forest for a distance of about eight kilometres. to enable the Ministry to call tenders for stage 1 of the main race by the end of January. This would be a major contract of the order of $750,000 to SIM.

Mr A. D. Stevens, water and soil engineer (irrigation) of the Ministry, said it was planned that the first water should be supplied to farmers in the spring of 1984 and the whole scheme should be completed and operating by late in 1985. But farm development will continue on for a number of

years after the actual completion of the distribution system. ’ The scheme will take water from the Hurunui River through an intake structure on the left bank of the river and it will flow by a short open race to a sand trap and settling pond. Water for irrigation will go from this pond through fish screens and a flow control gate into the main supply race, which will run through Balmoral Forest to the scheme boundary. From there water will be distributed to farms by a system of open earth-lined races, with water finally discharging back into the Pahau River and Dry Stream. In general it is expected that farm production will double under irrigation and will be more consistent from season to season and there will be greater opportunities for diversification of production. The Government earlier approved the scheme in principle in August. 1979. Subsequently at the end of that year farmers overwhelmingly voted in favour of the project by 21 votes to three. Water rights for the scheme were granted in February of this year. The scheme has long been seen as a logical continuation of the Waiau Plains scheme, using the same work, force and effectively completing irrigation development in the Culverden area. Ministry of Works officers said that environmental concerns had been well to the fore, with a lot of work being put into analysing the expected changes in river flow patterns. An environmental

report had been published in January last year and discussions had been held with the Fisheries Research Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Wildlife Service among other people. A lot of work was being done in conjunction with the Forest Service on developing a recreation area on the river bank near the intake. This would be a joint effort between the Ministry of Works and Development and the Forest Service and would probably include provision for boat launching, picnics, fireplaces, access to the river and even a small wildlife refuge. These amenities were in the design stage at present. The possibility of building a fish spawning race was also being investigated bv the Fisheries Research Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the landscaping of the whole area was being designed by the Ministry of Works and Development's environmental design section.