Ben Omar Station family anxious over consent proces
Omarama farmer Ginger Anderson shows where the Ahuriri River is cutting into his family’s valuable grazing flats on Ben Omar Station. PHOTO: SALLY RAE
An Omarama farming family fears it could lose hundreds of hectares of land, critical to its farming operation, while the consenting for river protection work is processed.An Omarama farming family fears it could lose hundreds of hectares of land, critical to its farming operation, while the consenting for river protection work is processed.
The Anderson family, of Ben Omar Station, have farmed next to the Ahuriri River for more than 100 years.
The flats beside the river, including lucerne paddocks, provide balance to the extensive hill country on the 8600ha property.
It was the third time in 30 years the family had had to apply to Environment Canterbury for the river protection consents and they said there had never previously been issues and nothing had changed in their perspective.
While Johnny Anderson said he understood there was a process and a cost involved, it had so far cost them about $70,000 and they were no further ahead.
All the family was doing was endeavouring to protect their land that they paid rates on.
Over the past 12 months, there had been multiple site visits by ECan staff, river engineers "to experts in every bloody thing".
The Andersons had forked out for a consultant and an ecology report, yet they could not get into the river "to do what we need to do", including maintaining stopbanks and they did not have a "bottomless pit" of money to keep funding the process.
Johnny Anderson’s father Ginger, who described the issue as being worse than previous plagues of rabbits in the area, said the Waitaki Catchment Board — whose primary purpose was to control flooding through the management of rivers and soil erosion — did a good job of looking after the river prior to the establishment of regional councils in 1989.
But now it was an "absolute bloody mess".
"We accept living on the river has got its problems ... but for Chrissake, let’s fix them."
While Ahuriri River might be described as a big, braided shingle river, it was not in their patch where a contributing problem was the "jungle" of willow trees on it, Johnny said.
Project River Recovery, funded by Meridian Energy and the Department of Conservation, which began operations in 1991 in response to the adverse impacts of hydro-electric power development on braided river and wetland ecosystems, had spent "God knows much money" on the river, left wood "everywhere" and walked away, he said.
If nothing was done to maintain the stopbanks, the Ben Omar flats could be wiped out following flood events, affecting at least about 400ha and potentially up to 1000ha.
Ginger said last winter the river was flowing at eight cumecs and the issue could have been easily fixed, while his son said half of the $70,000 already spent could have fixed the problem.
As Ginger pointed out the vast and thick expanse of willows on the river, he said there were virtually no willow trees when he was growing up on Ben Omar.
Another issue was the huge influx of Canada geese in the area which were chasing other birds away.
When contacted, ECan consents planning manager Henry Winchester said the law to create consent rollover was announced and passed under urgency on December 9 this year.
The consent application for Ben Omar was lodged on March 2, 2025, and the previous consent had already expired more than three months before that and there was no way a consent could be rolled over or extended in that case, as it had expired, Mr Winchester said.
The application had been on hold since February while ECan waited for the applicant to provide written approval, then lodge additional applications and provide information requested.
The applicant, through their consultant, asked for time to gather and provide the necessary information and application as well as to seek written approvals of affected parties for the consent to be processed.
The last information requested was received on December 5 and it was only then ECan had everything it needed to process the consent to a decision.
A notification decision had not been made and the applicant, through their consultant had requested their consent application remain on hold while they obtained written approval from the affected parties, to avoid notification of those parties.
ECan had agreed to continue to hold the application while that was pursued.
The regional council had invoiced the Andersons for $10,500 for the deposit required to process the three consents associated with the proposal.
The deposit was invoiced when the application was accepted for processing, he said.
Mr Winchester said the council’s local rivers and land management teams had been liaising directly with the Andersons on willow control and river flows as part of a catchment project.
It was also supporting a local goose cull over the holidays.