Resource consents are issued for a certain period of time. Before they expire, an application is needed to replace them.

Consent holders are now frequently asking questions about the renewal process and whether it is going to be possible to renew their irrigation consent.

This line of questioning shows that there is uncertainty and concern about this process, there are also misconceptions.

In most cases, if you are using your consent, you will be able to replace it. However, there are some aspects that need to be considered which may impact upon the ease of replacement and what conditions get imposed.

The replacement process requires a whole new application, most of the assessments required are the same as those for a brand-new consent. Just because it’s a replacement, doesn’t mean that it’s a form filling and tick box exercise. As part of the process remember that the council rules and requirements are likely to have changed since the original application was submitted. As such, what may have been acceptable in the past, may not be today. An example of this is where a bore is now deemed to have an impact upon a surface water feature. Councils are more focussed on this than they were in the past and this is having an impact upon some applicants. Because this can have an impact upon irrigation supply reliability due to stream/river restrictions, this can have a huge impact on the farm business. Another example is where fish screens need to be upgraded to meet current design requirements.

Another important aspect of the replacement process is that there’s now a requirement to prove that you need the water. Water meter data is vital for this purpose as you’ll need to show actual water use records to support your case for how much water you need. In the future it’s likely that soil moisture records will also be required to help demonstrate that water has been used efficiently and effectively.

With the approach the Canterbury Regional Council (CRC) take to assessing historic use, they already penalise those who use water most efficiently. This is because if you’ve used water carefully, you’ll have used less and therefore will be issued less upon renewal. The use-it or lose-it approach they are taking may promote the use of more water and reviewing soil moisture records is likely to become a tool used to help assess if water has been used efficiently.

Another thing to be aware of is the duration of the replacement consent. The duration you get will depend on a number of factors, one of which is the duration of other consents that serve the property. For example, if you have a farming land use consent, CRC will seek to align expiry dates. This can mean that the farming consent needs to be renewed at the same time as the irrigation consent, even if there are some years left on the farming consent.