Nelson faces drought in twoweeks

The Nelson region has made it onto another hotspot list, but this time it’s not good, with drought potentially looming.

The region is among a handful of locations around the country deemed ‘hotspots’ by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research ( Niwa) because of their significant soil moisture deficits. Persistent hotspot regions will potentially go into drought.

In the South Island, hotspots are currently located in Nelson and eastern Tasman, along with parts of southern Otago and coastal Southland, according to Niwa data.

Tasman District Council’s Dry Weather Taskforce convener Dennis Bush-King said the taskforce will meet tomorrow to consider what it needed to do in response to the dry sites across the district. It was possible water restrictions could be imposed in some areas the following week, he said.

Moutere and Golden Bay were two of the very dry areas of the Tasman district, although the Waimea River was still ‘‘holding up’’ well, with a flow of four cumecs (cubic metres per second) at the Wairoa Gorge, Bush-King said. Restrictions were not normally imposed until the water gets down to three cumecs, he said.

‘‘But in some areas we might need to consider what needs to be done,’’ Bush-King said.

Water use for irrigation had increased over the past few weeks, with crops needing that irrigation because of declining soil moisture, he said.

‘‘That tells us that things are dry.’’

Federated Farmers Nelson president Martin O’Connor said the dry conditions had happened ‘‘quite quickly’’ over the past few weeks, as up until now it had been a good season for farmers. While dry weather was to be expected for this time of year, he was hoping for rain to raise soil moisture levels.

‘‘If it continues like this, in two weeks’ time it’ll be getting pretty bad,’’ O’Connor said.

The driest soils in the South Island – when compared to normal for this time of year – were in Tasman, parts of the West Coast and much of Southland.

Niwa meteorologist Seth Carrier said the Nelson region had only had about 1mm of rain in January.