Irrigators may ‘go it alone’

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 16

Irrigators may ‘go it alone’

Concern about the lack of progress with the Barrhill Highbank irrigation scheme on the Rakaia River has prompted local farmers to consider “going it alone.”

The slowness of the scheme was causing dissatisfaction, said the chairman of the irrigation scheme committee, Mr Jack McKendry. He asked about 50 people at the committee’s annual meeting this week to consider letting the scheme to private contractors as an option to speed up work. Farmers were accused of making capital gains out of irrigation, Mr McKendry said. “This is just an illusion. If irrigation adds any capital value to a farm it is only a measure of improvements which have been fully paid for,” he said. There were difficulties in getting any water out of the Rakaia, and then more problems persuading the recreational interests to let farmers use it for irrigation.

Mr McKendry urged the guest speaker, the District Commissioner of Works, Mr Ron Grant, to speed up development of the scheme. Mr Grant said the development was being held up because of Government staff retrenchment policies, and the Rakaia River conservation order hearings. H the conservation order did not allow water to be used for irrigation, the scheme could not continue, Mr Grant said. The final hearings would not be until the end of the year, and so no answer was expected until well into 1985. Mr McKendry said that townspeople did not appreciate the value of irrigation to the district. “If farmers did all their spending for a month out of Ashburton the people would realise just how valuable that farming income is,” he said.

Slowness in developing the irrigation scheme meant that everyone was being penalised.,