Water allocation
Ko te wai te ora ngā mea katoa – water is the life-giver of all things
Life on earth needs water to survive. Our freshwater is precious, vital and finite.
Water is essential for our people, to grow crops and sustain animals, and to enable industry and other economic activities. It sustains communities, not only with water for domestic use, but for spiritual connection and for recreational pleasure. We share our need for freshwater with the aquatic and terrestrial plants, animals and landscapes of Te Taitokerau.
Northland Regional Council (NRC) is required to allocate water for use under the Resource Management Act and the Proposed Regional Plan for Northland (PRPN). The NRC’s current water allocation framework is implemented through the consenting process. It aims to balance the need to protect our groundwater, lakes, rivers and streams and their native biodiversity with enabling our communities to have access to the water they need.
This balance is established with work from NRC water resource scientists to assess water quantity and provide data for water allocation.
Water quantity
Water quantity means the amount of water that is present in a river, lake, wetland or aquifer at a particular point in time. Water quantity varies naturally in water bodies due to climate, land cover, and underlying geology. Natural variability in water flows and levels is important for the health of aquatic ecosystems and many of the services that they provide (for example, fisheries).
However, water quantity is also influenced by human activities, such as water takes, diversions, dams, bores and some uses of land. These activities need to be balanced against the need to ensure ecological flows and water levels are suitable to safeguard the health and mauri (life force) of aquatic ecosystems.
Water quantity management involves defining the amount of water that is required to remain in a water body to provide for ecosystem health and other in-stream values, and the available water that can be used. It also involves effectively and efficiently managing activities that affect water quantity.
Water allocation
Once water quantity has been determined, allocation is the process by which the council manages and permits the use of that water for drinking water, farming, industry and community use. While some freshwater takes require a resource consent, smaller takes do not and are identified as permitted takes.
What do we do
NRC maps current water allocations. These maps show how much water is currently allocated to be taken from Northland's rivers and aquifers. The level of allocation is then compared to the allocation limits in the PRPN to identify the catchments and aquifers where further allocation may still occur, and those that have reached their allocation limits and where no additional allocation is permitted.
See the indicative water quantity allocation maps and information
NRC’s scientists undertake investigations into water allocation at key catchments. You can read the reports in our document library: Water allocation reports