What is El Niño?

El Niño. We hear it being brought up in the news quite a bit, but what does it actually mean? No, it’s not a type of yoghurt!

El Niño preparedness 2026

Understand your water access before summer

As growers prepare orchards for the possibility of a dry El Niño summer, there is another aspect of drought preparedness that deserves attention: understanding how prolonged dry conditions could affect your legal/consented access to irrigation water.

Holding a water consent does not necessarily guarantee that the full consented volume will remain available throughout an extreme drought. Regional councils monitor river and stream flows, groundwater levels and other indicators and consent conditions may require takes to reduce or stop when specified minimum flows or groundwater levels are reached.

If conditions do become extreme, regional councils can also issue a Water Shortage Direction under the Resource Management Act, allowing them to temporarily apportion, restrict or suspend water takes where there is a serious temporary water shortage. These restrictions can apply to consented takes as well as water normally taken as a permitted activity.

It’s not unprecedented. During the severe Northland drought in 2020, Northland Regional Council issued a Water Shortage Direction requiring irrigation takes from both surface water and groundwater to cease in specified coastal catchments, including takes otherwise authorised by resource consent.

For growers taking water from streams and rivers, this makes ‘local coordination’ particularly important. Where several irrigators share the same catchment/river, everyone irrigating at the same time can add significant pressure to an already low-flow monitored waterway. Talking with neighbouring water users and developing irrigation rosters or staggered pumping arrangements before conditions become critical may help reduce peak abstraction. While this proactive approach supports ecological health, stream flows are often monitored at the upper reaches of a catchment meaning levels reaching minimum flows at these permanent monitoring sites will often dictate water restrictions.

Groundwater users should not assume they are isolated from drought restrictions either. Groundwater levels are monitored alongside surface-water flows and groundwater abstraction can also affect connected streams, neighbouring bores or stressed aquifers. The regional council’s current drought framework specifically monitors both stream flows and groundwater levels and provides for additional restrictions during exceptional water shortages and where necessary to maintain ecosystem health we may require water users to reduce, roster or stop taking water.

What growers should do now

Before summer irrigation demand increases:

• Read your water-take consent again and identify any minimum-flow, groundwater-level, pumping-rate, daily-volume or cease-take conditions.
• Know which Council monitoring site or reference flow your consent is linked to and how you will know when restrictions are approaching.
• Make sure water meters, telemetry and reporting systems are working correctly. Councils use water-use information to monitor allocation and compliance.
• Talk with neighbouring irrigators who share your stream, catchment or groundwater resource. Consider whether voluntary rostering or staggered irrigation could be agreed before water availability becomes critical or impacts ecological health.
• Review storage and contingency options now. Stored water can provide considerably more flexibility when direct abstraction becomes restricted.
• Understand what your councils rules are for Permitted takes and if water restrictions would apply to just irrigation use and/or for water for spray activities.
• Monitor Council river-flow, groundwater and drought information throughout summer, rather than waiting to be notified that a restriction has been imposed.

NZ Avocado will continue issuing updates and passing on detail received from Councils and can help growers navigate finding information, coordinating with Regional Council and answering further questions.

The important point is that drought preparedness is not only about using irrigation efficiently on your own orchard. In an extreme dry period, maintaining reliable access to water may increasingly depend on how well water users across a catchment understand the rules, monitor the resource and work together before regulatory restrictions become necessary.

Where to find more information?

Northland regional council – Environmental data
Bay of Plenty Regional council – Dry weather water management