Rain finishes early autumn dry spell
The rain that fell throughout Golden Bay this week has eased the early autumn near-drought situation that has been affecting some parts of the Bay.
Paynes Ford saw only 43mm of rain over the entire month of February (the highest fall was 12mm on the 10th), although the likes of Onekaka and Bainham fared better, with 93mm and 147mm respectively.
Water carriers around Takaka in particular had a busy month. In February alone the Takaka Fire Brigade delivered some 23 water-tankerloads to households short of water, with another 18 loads sent out in the current month to date. Tama Tikao’s water tanker Waitaha has been busy delivering too. TDC water resources manager Michael Thomas says the latest rain has certainly helped, but more is needed.
“Golden Bay is just lucky this latest dry spell didn’t come on top of an earlier one as happens some summers, the latest spring going into summer being reasonably wet.
“In early March,” continued Mr Thomas, “we recorded some of the lowest river levels that we’ve seen here over the last 10 years. The output of the main springs at Waikoropupu got down to 7,500 litres per second on 16 March as opposed to a 10,300 high that we got in January. The three big dairy irrigators in the Takaka Valley had to periodically restrict their flows [as part of their consents], and even the Anatoki Salmon Farm was required to ramp down their intake. They’ll all be looking forward to normal flows again.”
Michael says that whether the Cobb Reservoir is releasing water for power generation determines exactly how much water can be taken downstream in the Takaka River. “When the flow gets down to 1600 litres a second, as recorded at Harwoods river gauge at Upper Takaka, an automated system cuts in to restrict consent holders who are taking water. Luckily for them the Cobb reservoir has been fairly full over much of the summer, thanks to all that rain in December and January.
Last Monday it was still 43 per cent full, so there’s been plenty of backup there. Sometimes at this time of the year the reservoir can be down as low as three and four per cent capacity. When it’s like that, no water can be released for generation, so the river stays at low levels.
In short, we’re did reasonably OK, but some more rain would certainly be welcome!”
Gerard Hindmarsh
