(WORKING DOCUMENT - NOT COUNCIL POLICY)

• Abstraction
  means the taking using of water from a water body or the diverting of water outside of the bed of a river, lake or artificial watercourse.
• Alpine river
  means the Clarence, Waiau, Hurunui, Waimakariri, Rakaia, Rangitata and Waitaki Rivers.
• Annual volume or annual allocation volume
  Means:
  1.    in relation to a water permit, the total amount of water authorised via a water permit over a one year period (01 July to 30 June in the following year): and
  2.    in relation to an allocation block, the total amount of water that is available for allocation from that block.
• Artificial lake
  means a lake created by human action. It includes lakes created as a result of damming a river, constructing an impoundment on land, or excavating land, but excluding detention and retention basins for stormwater, and oxidation ponds and other artificial water bodies used to treat human or animal waste.
• Artificial watercourse
  means a watercourse that is created by human action. It includes an irrigation canal, water supply race, canal for the supply of water for electricity power generation, and farm drainage canal. It does not include artificial swales, kerb and channelling or other watercourses designed to convey stormwater.
• Bore
  means a structure or hole in the ground, generally less than 1m in diameter, constructed for the purpose of:
  1.    investigating or monitoring conditions below the ground surface; or
  2.    abstracting liquid substances from the ground; or
  3.    discharging liquid substances into the ground.
• Braided river
  means any river with multiple successively divergent and rejoining channels separated by gravel islands.
• Confined aquifer
  means an aquifer overlain by a low permeability or impermeable layer where the water in the aquifer is under pressure.
• Dewatering
  means the abstraction of groundwater so as to lower the water table for the period of time required to enable excavation, construction, and geotechnical work to proceed in the dewatered area, or to sustain a lower localised water table.
• Drain
  includes any artificial watercourse that has been constructed for the purpose of land drainage of surface or subsurface water and can be a farm drainage channel, an open race or subsurface pipe, tile or mole drain.
• Drainage system or land drainage system
  means a surface or subsurface pipe or channel or canal system for the collection, transfer and discharge elsewhere of surface or subsurface water.
• Drawdown
  means either:
  1.    lowering of water levels stored behind a dam or other water control structure; or
  2.    localised decline of a water table or in water pressure due to pumping.
• Ecological health
  refers to the condition of an ecosystem and its ability to function normally supporting the life-forms and processes naturally associated with it.
• Ecosystem
  means a system of interacting terrestrial or aquatic living organisms within their natural and physical environment.
• Ecosystem services
  means the physical functioning of a freshwater body that enables ecosystems, including people and communities to exist, and includes such things as flow variability, floodways, ponding and peak flow buffering.
• Efficiency
  includes both technical and allocative efficiency, and means that for any given level of output, inputs are minimised.
• Existing resource consent
  means:
  1.    existing resource consents which have been given effect to;
  2.    existing resource consents which have not been given effect to and have not lapsed; and
  3.    expired resource consents continuing to be exercised under s124 of the RMA.
• Field capacity
  means the moisture content of soil when the addition of further water would result in saturation and/or drainage of water from the soil.
• Fully allocated
  In the case of allocation of surface water means at the relevant limit specified in the environmental flow and allocation.
• Gallery
  means a horizontal underground conduit of perforated or porous material for collecting shallow groundwater by infiltration. These can be some distance form a river, but usually accessing water derived from surface water. “Water infiltration gallery” and “infiltration gallery” have the same meaning.
• Groundwater
  means all water beneath the surface of the earth contained within the saturated zone, but excludes the water chemically combined in minerals.
• Hapua
  means a shallow lake at the termination of a river, separated from the sea by a bank of sand or shingles and includes coastal lakes.
• High country
  means all land above 900m.
• Hill and high country land
  means land more than 20° degrees in slope or greater than 600m above mean sea level.
• Hill country land
  means all non-arable land below 900m altitude that is greater than 20° degrees in slope or greater than 600m above sea level.
• Intensive farming
  includes any agricultural production which results in the creation of living matter and which is carried out primarily within buildings, including but not limited to such activities as poultry farming (excluding low density free range poultry or the keeping of fewer than 12 birds), rabbit or fitch farming, pig farming or mushroom production.  For the purpose of this Plan ‘intensive farming’ excludes horticulture.
• Irrigation
  means the application of water to land, other than naturally occurring rainfall, springs or rainfall run-off.
• Ki uta ki tai
  means (literally) ‘from the mountains to the sea’ and is a Ngai Tahu concept to describe the overall approach to natural resources management by Ngäi Tahu and is a truly integrated approach.
• Land drainage water
  means water and contaminants discharged from a surface or subsurface pipe or channel or canal system for the collection, transfer and discharge elsewhere of surface or subsurface water.
• Main stem
  means, in relation to rivers, to that stem of the river which flows to the sea, and applies from the source of that stem to the sea, but excludes any tributary.
• Maori
  Ordinary people. Since 1820 used to distinguish the native, indigenous, people of this country, the Takata Whenua.
• Mauri
  means essential life force or principle; a metaphysical quality inherent in all things, both animate and inanimate.
• Mean Annual Daily Low Flow (MALF)
  means the average, for a number of years, of the annual lowest daily flows. This is determined by selecting the lowest daily flow (average over 24 hours) for each year of record, summing those values and then dividing the total by the number of years of record.
• Minimum flow
  means the flow at which abstractions from a water body must cease
• Natural lake
  means a lake which is formed by natural geomorphic processes, whether modified by human activity or not, and excludes any artificially made lake or pond.
• Natural state
  means undeveloped state, shaped by natural processes rather than by human activities.
• Natural state waterbodies
  means rivers, lakes and natural wetlands within land administered for conservation purposes by the Department of Conservation.
• Natural wetland
  means a wetland which is formed by natural geomorphic processes, whether modified by human activity or not, and excludes any artificially made wetland.
• Ngāi Tahu
  (Kai Tahu, when written in dialect form) the tribal group holding manawhenua in Te Waipounamu, the area from Kahuraki Point on the West Coast and Te Parinui-o-Whiti (Vernon Bluffs) on the east, and all places south “until the land turns white”. “Ngāi Tahu” can refer to both the collective of Ngāi Tahu, or an individual rūnanga.
• Non-point discharge
  means run-off or leachate from land, onto or into land, a water body or the sea.
• Nutrient discharge
  means the modelled discharge of nitrogen using Overseer (TM) version 5.1
• Outstanding freshwater bodies
  includes hapua, natural wetlands, natural state waterbodies, high naturalness waterbodies and waterbodies subject to Water Conservation Orders.
• Plantation forest
  includes all areas of trees grown for harvest or as a carbon sink forest with a density of 150 stems per hectare or more.
• Point source discharge
  means a discharge from a specific and identifiable outlet, onto or into land,   a water body or the sea.
• Property
  means any contiguous area of land held in one, or more than one, ownership that is utilised as a single operating unit, and may include one or more titles.
• Pumping test (also called aquifer test)
  means a test made by pumping a well for a period of time and observing the change in water level or pressure in the aquifer. A pumping test may be used to determine the capacity of the well and the hydraulic characteristic of the aquifer.
• Reasonable use
  when applied to the taking, diverting or using of water for irrigation means the technically efficient use of water use in the particular circumstances of the applicant.
• Reasonable use test
  when applied to the taking, diverting or using of water for irrigation, means a test of the technical efficiency of water use in the particular circumstances of the applicant, including consideration of the water requirements for the intended land use activity; whether there are already existing consents for the use of water for the same area of land (either partially or totally); on-site physical factors such as soil water-holding capacity, and climatic factors such as rainfall and evaporation.
• Reliability of supply
  means, in relation to irrigation, the ability of the water supply to meet demand from one or more abstractors, when operating within the flow and allocation regime or the allocation limits.
• Seven Day Mean Annual Low Flow (7DMALF)
  is determined by adding the lowest seven day low flow for every year of record and dividing by the number of years of record (In any year the seven-day low flow is the lowest average flow sustained over seven consecutive days for every seven consecutive day period in the year).
• Silent file site
  means a wahi tapu/wahi taonga site identified, but not publicly acknowledged.
• Soil moisture deficit
  is the amount of water required to restore the soil to its field capacity.
• Stream depleting groundwater
  means groundwater abstraction that has a direct, high, medium or low stream depletion effect.
• Stream depletion effect
  means the impact of groundwater abstraction on surface water flow.
• Surface water or surface water body
  means water above the ground surface and within a lake, river, artificial watercourse or wetland, but does not include water in the sea, snow or rain or water vapour in the air.  When a distance to a surface water body is being considered, it means the distance to the bed of a lake, river, artificial watercourse or to the boundary of a wetland (see wetland boundary definition).
• Surrendered
  means the partial or full surrendering of a resource consent in terms of section 138 of the RMA
• Swale
  means a shallow depression on the land surface, that is covered in grass or other vegetation, that is natural or man-made and that serves to drain overland runoff.
• Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu
  means the body corporate of Ngāi Tahu Whānui as established under Section 6 of the Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Act 1996
• Telemetered
  means the transfer of data to the Canterbury Regional Council or its agent via electronic means in real-time or near real-time.
• Unconfined aquifer
  means an aquifer that lacks an overlying layer of fine sediment, and is not under pressure.
• Unused water
  means the surplus (if any) between water that is allocated in a resource consent and that shown by the metering of a water take to have been actually taken, measured over the period 1 July to 30 June in the following year.
• Water race or water supply race
  means a type of artificial watercourse used for the managed conveyance of water often, but not exclusively, for stockwater or irrigation purposes and excludes any drain.
• Water supply strategy
  means a written document that includes strategies to reduce water demand during times of low water supply or when water supplies are on restriction.  It may be a part of local authority Bylaw or asset management plan.
• Water users group
  means a group of users with existing authorisation to take water, grouped to achieve beneficial management of the water resource collectively allocated to them.
• Weir
  means a dam erected across a river to raise the level of the water.
• Wetland boundary
  means the point in the transition from wetland to dryland where wetland plant species occur at more than four times their ungrazed height apart. Wetland edge has a similar meaning.
• Wetted bed
  means the area of the bed of a lake or river that is at or below the water level at a particular point in time.