Blind River Irrigation Scheme

During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the notoriously dry Awatere Valley in Marlborough was hit with a succession of dry years. In 2003 some local farmers decided it was time to do something about the fix they were in. They set up a private, $12M irrigation scheme, which when commissioned, covered 1750ha and dramatically changed land use in the valley.

Coastal Marlborough has some of the highest evaporation rates in New Zealand. The Blind River catchment is just north of Lake Grassmere where the local salt works relies on that high evaporation to produce their crop.

Up the Awatere, farmers had struggled through the summer for ten years or so. Every now and again they’d get a good season but usually by late November it was starting to turn into a dustbowl. The usual measure of a farm’s carrying capacity was turned on its head – not how much stock you can “winter” but how many you can “summer.” One local farmer said that the growing window is only four months long.

The dry climate aside, the local land is said to be “sweet country” and that had attracted interest from wine makers intent on picking up cheap land and putting in grapes.

Spurned by a particularly bad drought in 1997, farmer Graham Hewett and a local wine grower got together and started talking about irrigation.

In 2002 there had been six applications from individual landowners for resource consent to take water from the Blind River catchment but obviously there wasn’t enough for everyone since the river only runs for a portion of the year. That led to rather strained relationships among neighbours. As in other areas of Marlborough the main driver for this came from those looking to grow grapes. The idea was to combine forces with those local land owners and come up with a scheme that would benefit them all.

In December 2002 seven of them met with a local engineer to discuss a reticulating irrigation scheme from an intake at the Awatere River. There was an initial contribution of $50 for each proposed hectare. The idea was that at no stage would any of them go to either ratepayers or the government for a handout.

The group of landowners were able to secure resource consent for 330 litres a second.

At a public meeting in March 2003, landowners were asked to confirm their interest by paying out $2000 per ha for every hectare they proposed to irrigate. All up 38 landowners took up the offer and the total land area covered is 1750ha.

Graham Hewett says one of their bright ideas in selling the scheme, was to get all interested landowners and all affected banks, accountants, contractors, engineers etc etc together in one room to talk about the project. That meant that everyone was aware of what was happening and how much it was costing.

Trenches for the pipeline were dug starting in March 2004 and all pipes were laid by June 2005.

There were some issues to do with power, with booster pump stations scattered throughout the project and the likelihood of future on farm uses for pumping from storage etc.

Last and definitely not least was the need to build dams to store water for the times of the year when water can’t be directly drawn from the Awatere. The recommendation from the engineers was that landowners should consider storage of up to 50% of their water needs. In the case of grapes, an average plant requires around 6 litres per day which would add up over 20 ha or so.

The dams themselves are expensive to build with a lot of rules and regulations regarding construction and placement. June Ryan was an early adopter of this part of the project.

Graham Hewett used to farm Lucknow with his wife Janet. They have now “retired” to the Marlborough Sounds. Prior to moving to Marlborough the Hewetts farmed Glenhope station up the Lewis Pass.  Lucknow is 300 ha. It ran sheep and cattle.

Graham was with Federated Farmers during the drought era. He took over drought relief co-ordination and became the spokesperson for the district in the media Obviously this had an impact on his subsequent interest in the irrigation scheme.

He has tales of feeding out cabbages, apples, anything they could get their hands on, to stock .

Graham’s quietly proud of the fact that he got the scheme up and running. He takes delight in the fact that the district council didn’t really know what they were up to and that there’s been no public money hand-out to make it work.

Along with the Hewetts, June Ryan has come to the realisation that farming the traditional way in this district was getting too difficult. She’s paid to get water to about 160 ha – which is spread out over the farms she owns. She is in the process of putting in a dam and is confident about the future of the district.