Waimea Water/Supplied
A photograph from September 2020 showing the Lee River flowing through the recently completed diversion culvert at the site of the Waimea dam build in the Lee Valley, near Nelson.
A letter leaked to
Stuffreveals concerns about delays with the Waimea Community Dam build including fears those hold-ups threaten the 2022-23 irrigation season. “This is of serious concern to Waimea Water and its stakeholders,” says Waimea Water Ltd chief executive Mike Scott in the letter, dated December 24, 2020, addressed to the contractor for the build – a joint venture of Fulton Hogan and Taylors Contracting. Waimea Water Ltd is the company responsible for managing the construction, operation and maintenance of the dam, which has been under construction since 2019 in the Lee Valley, about 36km southeast of Nelson.
Virginia Woolf/Stuff
The level of nitrate in the waters under parts of the Waimea Plains has long been of concern.
Agricultural and livestock land uses are the primary sources of nitrate contamination in the waters on and under the Waimea Plains, a new report has found. A summary of existing science from catchment management consultant Andrew Fenemor for the Tasman District Council said monthly groundwater data suggested that historic contamination from a piggery that closed in the 1980s has “likely passed and that the nitrate signature in these wells is caused by local and upstream intensive land uses, particularly market gardening”.