Melanie Brooks, chief executive of water supply scheme MHV Water, has stepped down from the role after nearly a decade.

“I’ve been at MHV for seven and a half years, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the journey.”

The hunt is on for a new chief executive, but in the meantime, Livestock Visibility Solutions’ chief operations officer Jason Hurst will take the wheel.

“He’ll bring a lot to that role,” Brooks said.

“He used to work for Ravensdown, he’s a chartered accountant, he’s led the Ravensdown store network.”

“And he grew up in Mid Canterbury.”

Brooks said the cooperative had experienced a lot of ups and downs over her time as chief executive.

“One of the biggest challenges we had was back in July 2018, where 1.8 kilometres of our Valletta line collapsed.”

It had been a dry winter, and with irrigation season fast approaching, the team had to work fast to get the line back up and running.

“The team really stood up over that period.”

Assessments of all the water lines were carried out afterwards, and reinforcements made where needed.

“As a result of that, we’re so much more resilient in our infrastructure space across the whole scheme.”

She also recalls the outreach work she’d been a part of over the years, helping non-rural folk understand what goes into raising animals and growing crops.

She recalls speaking at an event in Christchurch after MHV received their discharge consent.

“The whole way through, there was a guy standing in the middle with a cow skeleton on his face.

“At the end of the presentation, he came up and talked to me for probably 15 minutes.

“It wasn’t aggressive or confrontational - he had questions, and I was more than happy to answer them.”

Inviting non-famers into the farming world helped create some understanding about what farmers do, how they care for the land, and “how the prosperity of Mid Canterbury is underpinned by water,” she said.

“Off the back of that we had the Extinction Rebellion group, Greenpeace and Forest & Bird come on a tour of the scheme.”

“I thought, ‘this could go wrong in so many ways,’ but it started conversations.”

Vice versa, she’d organised events with Arowhenua to help MHV shareholders understand the world through their eyes.

“That helped us build bridges, and better understand what the broader community, outside of our immediate one, were after.”

Brooks will start her new role, chief executive for livestock and insurance agency Hazlett, in the new year.

She said the work environment will be quite similar to MHV.

“It’s really focussed around people, it’s got some fantastic community relationships, and the members of the team are fantastic.

“There's never a good time to leave, but MHV’s really well positioned.

“I’ve loved it. I’ve absolutely loved working at MHV and being a part of the community.”

By Anisha Satya