Innovative water quality approaches were on show at the recent Ashburton Water Zone Committee’s Hekeao Hinds field trip.
The field trip gave an opportunity for regional and water zone committee members to join ECan staff and councillors to learn about the innovative techniques being used by the Hekeao Hinds Water Enhancement Trust (HHWET) to improve local water quality.
HHWET trustees took participants to several managed aquifer recharge (MAR) and near river recharge (NRR) sites to learn about the history of the different sites, the work that has been done to date, and future plans.
Stops included sites on Timaru Track Road, Mayfield Klondyke Road, Lennies Road, and a proposed site on Winslow Road.
Participants toured a section of Neroli and Harley Davies’ farm, Gawler Downs, where NRR work was under way. The 1187ha property was made up of hills and flat land, perfect for their sheep, deer and beef farming operations.
The 2021 Ashburton floods caused damage to some of the farm, so participants were shown the work that has taken place since which included saving harakeke/flax from metres of mud, reconstructing a wetland and installing around 10,000 native plants into the ground.
Canterbury mudfish (threatened) would be released into the wetland and a DOC covenant was in place for lizard habitat.
Water quality, river flow, groundwater level and fish population monitoring had shown improvements in all these areas over the last four years due to these steps.
Environment Canterbury’s Brett Painter said MAR sites involved cleaning the topsoil off an area to create a leaky water basin or race.
“Clean water is then poured into the area, which trickles down into the groundwater helping clean the groundwater system and the springs which are connected to this groundwater,” he said.
“An NRR site is the same procedure but, near a river instead of out in the plains. NRR provides a clean water top up to the target river system when flows are low.
“These are two of the tools being used to address water quality issues and to help ensure the community meets water legislations,” he said.
Painter said the field trip gave him the opportunity to talk about the complexities of cleaning up a catchment which had been degraded for over 150 years.
“I’m really proud of this community, they’ve accepted the challenge of having very high groundwater nitrate concentrations, and they’re keen to change that as soon as possible,” he said.

• By Pat Deavoll