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The Regional Council is about to release its long-awaited Regional Water Assessment, which looks at HB’s overall water demand and supply situation over the next 50 years.

As background for this report, our Trust’s soil expert, Trustee Phil Schofield, was commissioned by the Regional Council to prepare a desktop analysis compiling existing evidence that certain soil management practices – ‘regenerative’ – result in greater water retention and soil moisture. An obvious benefit in terms of better utilising the water resource that rainfall (and water storage) provides.

We described Phil’s report in an earlier article here. He concluded:

“If we can improve soil function on half the area of the Ruataniwha and Heretaunga Plains (28,000 ha) to 600 mm depth or greater and increase soil carbon by 1% we could store between 2.8 million and 14 million cubic meters more water in the soils than we currently do.”

Phil adds: “This option is much easier to do and less risky than building dams, but we need to advance the proof rapidly and make it easy for land owners to buy into changed management of their soil.”

The Trust is pleased to learn that Phil’s report is included as an appendix in the Regional Water Assessment, which will drive future discussion over how to achieve greater water security and resilience for the region.

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