As noted in earlier Bulletin items, Simon Berry and Jen Vella acted for Hamilton City Council ("HCC") in support of its application to Environment Waikato to take 146,000m³/day from the Waikato River to supply the people and businesses of the rapidly growing city of Hamilton. Submissions had been lodged by Genesis Energy Limited, which wanted to ensure that HCC's take would not compromise its ability to discharge cooling water from the Huntly power station, and by Waikato Tainui, which raised environmental concerns.

HCC's application was structured to conform with the requirements of Waikato Regional Plan Variation 6 ("RPV6"), which relates to water allocation in the Waikato Region. It was thus supported by a comprehensive water conservation and demand management plan that substantiated and justified the proposed water take and set out the mechanisms by which Hamilton City Council will manage demand for water in the future.

Consent was granted for 35 years subject to a comprehensive suite of conditions, volunteered by HCC, which provided for a stepped take over the life of the consent to provide for future growth of the City. That approach enabled HCC to achieve certainty for its municipal supply over the long term while ensuring that the water  not being used immediately can be allocated to other users in the meantime. The consent conditions supporting that approach also require sophisticated regular reporting on water use and demand management initiatives etc., including verification of the need for the next "step" in the stepped take and progress reports by which HCC can advise Environment Waikato that it intends to reduce the amount of water taken in accordance with revised forecasted growth figures. No appeals were lodged against Environment Waikato's decision.

Such was the quality and sophistication of this project that it won no fewer than three awards from the Resource Management, Planning and Engineering professions, namely:

• RMLA Award for Best Project, which is given to a project that has made a significant contribution to the advance of resource management best practice. 
• New Zealand Planning Institute Award for "Projects of Investigation, Reporting, Systems or Processes"; and
• ACENZ Award of Merit given in recognition of an outstanding project.