Appendix 1: Contract
Work Plan of contract between Ministry of Economic Development and Institute of Geological Sciences
Terms of Reference: Identification of Nationally Important Waterbodies for Industrial and Domestic Uses
The Ministry of Economic Development (MED) is a member of the interdepartmental group that is leading a project to identify waterbodies of national importance. This project is the first stage of furthering the government's goal under the Sustainable Development Programme of Action - "water bodies with nationally significant natural, social or cultural heritage values are protected."
As part of this project, MED is leading a subproject to identify candidate waterbodies of national importance in relation to industrial and domestic uses.
Scope of Work
The project will provide a list of waterbodies considered to be important for industrial and domestic uses, and a description of the methodology and criteria used to identify these waterbodies. It is not within the scope of the project to decide the threshold for national importance, rather it is to describe the importance of waterbodies in terms of certain criteria.
The project includes those waterbodies that are important now and those that are estimated to be important within the next 20 years. "Industrial" encompasses waterbodies that are used to supply industry (not including irrigation and hydro generation).
The project will identify the waterbodies that are important for industrial and domestic purposes separately. The size of catchments examined under the project will be based on major surface water catchments and ground water systems as set out in catchment maps held by MED. For surface water catchments, a GIS shape file of New Zealand catchments is available to be used.
Methodology and criteria need to be developed, and a draft report written by 31 January 2004. A final report, incorporating comments from the Ministry needs to be completed by 13 February 2004.
Criteria
For both industrial and domestic waterbodies, the measure of "national importance" for the project will include the economic value of water taken, and for domestic uses the measure will also include the number of people served. This information will be used to compare across other uses of water such as hydro-generation and irrigation. Additional criteria may be recommended by consultants.
Information Sources
Two significant existing information sources will be drawn on:
- A series of Excel spreadsheets containing information on water consents for each regional council. The spreadsheets identify water take consents within the council's locality, the catchment or groundwater system that water is taken from, the quantity taken and for what purpose. However, each council has collected information to varying degrees and in varying classifications. Consequently, there is little consistency between regional data. For example, the "industrial use" category for each regional council does not necessarily encompass all the same uses. Normalisation across council spreadsheets will be necessary.
- A paper prepared for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) entitled Economic Efficiency of Water Allocation. The 2001 paper contains a table which shows value added per volume of water allocated for various industries. The table was based on, among other studies, a project undertaken by McDermott Fairgray which established water use per $1 million for 50 industries in 1997/1998.
Methodology
The above information will be used to calculate water value for industrial uses from each catchment. Where the consent spreadsheets do not contain sufficient detail on the specific industry drawing water, industry sources (such as dairy or forestry associations) will be used to provide this information.
Regional, district and city councils may also be drawn on for information. The Consultant will contact Elizabeth Eastmure at the Ministry for the Environment prior to making any requests to councils, to ensure the information sought is not already held by departments.
The MAF paper does not include information on the value of water for domestic use. An estimation will be made of this value for the purposes of this project, in order to determine the importance of waterbodies for domestic uses.
Estimations for water use for industrial and domestic purposes over the next 20 years will be made. Future domestic (and possibly industrial) use will be based on Statistics New Zealand regional population projections.
Key Deliverables
The key deliverables are:
- A ranked list of waterbodies (surface and groundwater) that are important (for both industrial and domestic purposes);
- A map identifying the catchments and groundwater systems in the above list;
- A report describing the methodology and criteria used to identify the nationally important waterbodies. The report will:
- record assumptions used in the analysis;
- be analytically and technically robust;
- include user friendly discussion where appropriate to summarise in-depth analytical and/or technical work;
- be comprehensive and well written.
Milestones
31 January 2004 - a draft report (including a draft ranked list of water bodies and a draft map identifying the water bodies) is submitted to the Ministry by the Consultant.
6 February 2004 - the Ministry forwards comments on the draft report to the Consultant.
13 February 2004 - a final report (including a ranked list of water bodies and a map identifying the water bodies) incorporating comments from the Ministry is submitted to the Ministry by the Consultant.
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