It was given the green light 55 days from application by an Environmental Protection Authority panel under former Environment Court chief justice Laurie Newhook.
The fast-tracked consent is for an 18ha, 750,000 cubic metre reservoir in the upper catchment of the Kopenui stream east of Kaikohe behind a 24m high dam.
The water is to be used for irrigation and for commercial, industrial and municipal uses, especially as a backup for the nearby town in drought times.
Some of the water would augment the Wairoro stream and be transported about 5km to the south of the town where it would be taken out and reticulated to volcanic areas where there are already horticultural developments.
Above-median flows in the Kopenui would be captured in the dam and below-median flows bypass the storage and continue downstream.
The application was made by the Te Tai Tokerau Water Trust under the Covid-19 Recovery (Fast-Track Consenting) Act 2020 to urgently promote employment to support the recovery of the economy.
The trust is chaired by ex-Foreign Minister, 30-year National MP and Northland resident Murray McCully, assisted by former Labour MP Dover Samuels, local businessman Ken Rintoul and Dargaville accountant and kumara grower Kathryn de Bruin.
Matawii was top of the list of 17 shovel-ready projects for which applications could be made under the act and was the only rural project. Irrigation is planned to start in the summer of 2022, about 14 months from now.
The panel said it had regard to dam safety and construction controls, Treaty of Waitangi principles and Maori cultural issues, potential archaeological matters, landscape and visual amenity, and aquatic and terrestrial ecology.
The trust was granted $8.5m and loaned $60m by the Provincial Growth Fund and one of his final acts as Regional Economic Development Minister was for Shane Jones to symbolically begin construction on the access road to the dam site.
At that ceremony Far North District Council mayor John Carter said Matawii was Kaikohe’s opportunity to replicate the irrigation development downstream of two lakes in the Kerikeri scheme, built in the 1980s.
The fast-track EPA route was instead of the probably lengthy Northland Regional Council, Resource Management Act and Environment Court appeal process.
But it also has detractors.
A group of concerned residents at Ohaeawai, near to a second proposed site for water storage in the mid-north, called Te Ruaotehauhau, held public meetings recently when they heard about the dam site.
The second lake was planned to be 30ha in area and store 1.4m cubic metres of water behind a 21m high dam.
Residents said they were concerned about the increased spraying that would result from orchard developments.
Some called for Te Tai Tokerau Trust to go through the usual consent process and not the fast-track route, so that residents could have their say.
Neither of the water schemes in the Kaikohe-Ohaeawai districts are expected to cater for dairying, rather for kiwifruit, avocados, market gardens and other higher land uses.
