What Was the Problem?
Warren has a dairy farm in the West Eyreton area of Canterbury and extracts water via the Waimakariri Irrigation Limited scheme to a storage pond . The scheme has a consent to take water from the Waimakariri river, though at times, the river can be placed on restriction either when the river flows are low or ironically, then the flow is too high. Therefore many farmers have made strategic decisions to construct storage ponds enabling them to have irrigation capability when the river is on restriction.
Warren built a 4 ha irrigation storage pond during the conversion to dairying with the objective of having at least one months water storage available at all times. Hundreds of ducks used the pond and consequently fouled the water.
How this was Solved?
A HydroBoost unit was installed on a floating raft in 2015. The HydroBoost unit was dropping the silt from the water race within 20m of entry into the pond. While operating over a period of two years, the water stayed perfectly clean.
However, unknown to the farmer, the raft which hosted the HydroBoost unit was beached for a period of twelve months and not operational in the pond. Over this time, the water went from clear to a rough dirty brown. When a check was initiated, a few minor repairs were made to the raft and the HydroBoost device launched back into the pond.
What were the Benefits?
When the device was turned back on, the water changed from the dirty brown to clear blue within three weeks. The farmer noted the clean water and was very excited. Like most farmers taking care of the environment is important. Warren’s objective is to keep the pond clean and healthy – in addition, he believes it helps the grass grow better, (though it still requires further investigation) and has vowed to keep the unit operational. In his words;
“I’d be very disappointed if you took the unit away”