Land drainage management plan

Report: PS 2019/14

Author: Guy Russell

The purpose of this plan is to provide context and direction for the implementation of the Waikato Regional Council's Integrated Catchment Management Directorate (ICM) land drainage activities.

The purpose of land drainage is to manage water tables and clear ponded water.  Land drainage is an additional layer of service provided by Waikato Regional Council to specific rural geographical areas called drainage areas.

Drainage areas are located within the Lower Waikato, Waipā, Central Waikato, West Coast and Waihou-Piako zones and they normally cover relatively flat land where a community managed drainage network is essential to allow landowners to sustain pastoral farming.

The council's drainage network manages water from the land and its surface to the river channels. The land drainage programme provides benefit to 172,000 hectares of land, some 7 per cent of the region’s area. The capital value of the properties benefitting from the land drainage programme is $16.7 billion.

The land drainage service is provided through a partnership with landowners where the Council has a stewardship responsibility to maintain a primary network of drains on private land for, and on behalf of, the various communities of landowners located within each of the drainage areas so the landowners can drain their own land for farming purposes. The service is entirely funded by targeted land drainage rates in addition to the other zone and specific targeted rates for catchment, flood protection, biosecurity and natural heritage works.

Waikato Regional Council manages some 1,493 individual drains totalling 2,063 km in length within 84 separate drainage areas or subdivisions of drainage areas, and has 92 separate funding systems that allow the necessary work programmes to be completed.