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Wellington Region

Surface Water Zone: Wairarapa Coast

The Wairarapa Coast Water Management Zone is located in the eastern part of the wairarapa and is defined by the boundaries of catchments that drain to the sea (rather than into the Wairarapa Valley).

It occupies a relatively large area (2,478 square kilometres or 30 percent of the region), but is situated in the least populated part of the region. 

The Wairarapa Coast Water Management Zone comprises predominantly rolling hill country with low intensity farming and forestry being the primary land uses. The zone contains several notable rivers including the Whareama, Pahaoa and Kaiwhata. These catchments are relatively large but summer flows are very low. Therefore, there are no on-stream or hydro-generation schemes on water resources within this zone.

The type of land use and lack of high yield water resource means that abstractive pressures in this management zone are very low relative to other parts of the region.

Default rule-of-thumb policies relating to minimum flows and allocation limits are therefore adopted. Attention in this zone is focused more on managing water quality (particularly nutrient and sediments loads).

Surface Water in this Zone

Regional councils collect information about how much water is available and manage resource consents for those wishing to take water from rivers and streams. Use the buttons below to view information on: how much water is available, where it comes from and how its used.

Water Quantity

Rainfall Runoff to sea Surface Water available: Irrigation
 Industrial
 Stock
 Hydroelectrical
 Town supply
  • How much surface water is there in this zone?

    Rainfall and flow in this surface water zone

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    Rainfall and runoff

    Relative breakdown Source Volume
    Rainfall total:

    		rainfall Rainfall Total
    Runoff total:

    		runoff Runoff to sea

    The table above shows the average amount of rainfall the water management zone receives each year and how much of that flows out to sea. These are approximate figures only.

    Total run-off to sea has been estimated by aggregating mean flow statistics from the River Environment Classification (developed by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research). 

  • Water consents: How much water is consented and used?

    Surface water available to consent

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    Consented water in this surface water zone

    Use the tables below to look at how much water is available compared with how much is actually consented within this water management zone. Click the plus to expand subzones where available

    Values for water availability have not yet been provided. Greater Wellington Regional Council is in the process (as at June 2015) of notifying a new Regional Plan that will contain proposed allocation limits.  When this Plan is notified the proposed limits will be used to update the empty fields.

  • Water consents: How is consented water used?

    Consents by use in this surface water zone

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    Consented water

    Overall annual volume for
    Relative breakdown
    Activity Percentage of total consented Total volume Number of consents
    Total % m3

    The above table shows the proportion of water consented for irrigation, industrial, stock, town supply and other.

Monitored sites in this Zone

...retrieving sites.

No sites found.

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