40 | North Otago Irrigation Co T T Hugh de Lacy Environmental outcomes a priority REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Switchbuild specialise in the integration of process & control systems and the presentation of plant data • Services: Design / ACAD / Commissioning • Dashboards: Customised Data Acquisition • Reports: Process / Operational / Compliance • Alarm Notification: Operator Plans • Programming: PLC / HMI / SCADA / Telemetry • Systems Engineering: Industrial networks / Communications • Switchboards: Motor Control Centres, Power Distribution • Electrical Technician: Switchboard and process upgrades Proud to be associated with North Otago Irrigation Co | There’s no compromise on environmental outcomes in North Otago Irrigation’s management of both its own farm irrigation network, and those of three other schemes in the Waitaki Valley. North Otago Irrigation Company Ltd (NOIC) is owned by shareholders who collectively farm around 26,000ha of highly productive land. It also manages three other schemes taking water from the Waitaki River: the Lower Waitaki, Kurow-Duntroon and Maerewhenua Irrigation companies. In its wider management role, North Otago Irrigation is responsible for ensuring that farmers comply with the conditions of the company’s resource consents. “We deploy a team of people who are, among other things, responsible for ensuring our farmers manage their farming systems in accordance with farm environmental plans (FEPs), which are independently audited, and for following up action plans arising from those audits, to make sure they’re eliminating or minimising all the environmental risks that come from producing food,” the company’s Chief Executive, Andrew Rodwell says. “This is a vital responsibility, and we don’t compromise on it.” The company was incorporated in 1990 but didn’t gain its resource consents until 2003. A year later it started the construction of the first stage of the scheme, supplying 10,000ha of the valley with four cumecs of water. Stage Two effectively doubled the capacity, and was completed in 2017. The scheme is one of the more modern in New Zealand, delivering water that is entirely piped and under pressure to the farm gate at a rate of 0.4 litres per second, enabling spray irrigation applications at 3.5mm per hectare per day. Delivery at a pressure of about five bar means farmers don’t typically have to do any further pumping to get it round the farm. It makes irrigation easy from the farmer’s perspective: it’s operated “at the flick of a switch” – the press of a button on a phone app - without prior ordering or rostering. The Waitaki River irrigating the droughtprone Waitaki Valley is the fourth biggest by flow in the country, and the hydro stations on it, started in the 1930s, today provide between 20% and 25% of New Zealand’s electricity. The river’s uses are controlled by the Waitaki Catchment Water Allocation Plan, whose role it is to ensure that the communities on the river, no less than the irrigators and electricity generators, can access the resource in a way that protects the river’s environmental and cultural characteristics. North Otago Irrigation is structured as a cost-recovery business founded on co-operative principles. Shares, allocated at the rate of one per irrigated hectare, are subject to on-going fixed and variable charges that shareholders pay monthly, and which are set at a rate calculated to recover all the overheads, debt servicing and power costs. Individual farm flows are recorded monthly by water meters, and if the farm doesn’t use its allocation it is not charged the variable power cost, though it still has to meet the fixed operational and debt-servicing charges. Following a recent offer, all remaining available shares have been taken up. “This is a great outcome,” Andrew says, “as it means the scheme’s capacity is now fully realized and the vision of the founding fathers vindicated.” The four irrigation schemes on the Waitaki River create an additional $74 million in farmgate value each year, driving positive social changes that include population growth, a significant improvement in median household income, and a younger and better educated demographic. North Otago Irrigation otherwise contributes significantly to the community by funding environmental groups and projects and, in these days of hot dry summers, connecting rural fire hydrants for use by the Waitaki Rural Fire Authority. “We deploy a team of people who are, among other things, responsible for ensuring our farmers manage their farming systems in accordance with farm environmental plans....”
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