Scott Technical Instruments Limited, jointly with Environment Canterbury has been recognised by the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) for their groundbreaking work on water telemetry. The Stil Flow Metering Telemetry System - a joint project between Scott Technical Instruments and Environment Canterbury, won the Rural Award at the 20th annual TUANZ Awards, held in Auckland on the 28th September.

"This award is for the most innovative rural product, service or initiative developed in New Zealand, and delivered electronically to New Zealanders, which enhances productivity in the rural sector; whether it be agribusiness, farming, the dairy industry, horticulture or otherwise. Rural Award Judge

This is a water management system designed for Environment Canterbury by Scott Technical Instruments. It combines hardware and software plus telecommunications as a selling point to provide unique, dynamic system to monitor farmer's irrigation needs to meet their resource consent conditions." Master of Ceremonies, John Campbell from Campbell Live

The STIL Metering Telemetry System is a progression of the STIL Flow logger that has been used for many years now, not only in Canterbury but all over New Zealand. With the increasing cost of manually downloading and forwarding data to the regulatory bodies new cost effective telemetry options have driven the development of this product. Scott Technical is further developing the system at present to allow a Flow Logger that is non-telemetered to be converted to a telemetered unit by simply plugging in a small cell phone module. This will provide customers with a cost effective upgrade path should telemetry be required in the future.

It won't necessarily tell us how the supplies will last, but it will allow us to verify the relationship between climate and the use of ground water and that is useful for us in order to be able to predict how we might address the allocation of ground water in the future. We've got a means of trying to predict where water - ground water levels - would actually be and that might allow us to determine whether or not restrictions would be necessary and that, if we can tell farmers that early enough, then it would be a much better situation than, rather than saying, well sorry guys there's no more left, at a week's notice. That's not useful for anybody. Howard Williams (Hydro-geologist)

A Brief Summary of the Trial

Environment Canterbury and Scott Technical Instruments established a trial to use the combined capabilities of telemetry and the Internet to encourage the rural sector to self-regulate water use whilst providing a platform for more cost effective collection or resource information.

The STIL Flow Metering Telemetry System is a new product designed specifically to meet the monitoring requirements of groundwater and surface water consent conditions. It can be integrated with climate data from regional weather stations and other data logging devices used in the operation of irrigation equipment. Access to climate and soil moisture data in real time will encourage improvements in efficiency of current water use and allow irrigation to be scheduled effectively to maximise yields and use water efficiently.

Finally, the desired outcome of the trial was to ensure that the trial participants complied with their consent conditions. The website was customised to provide current and combined totals of water use from individual consent holders with access to low flow information, dam levels, climate data and soil moisture stats. The site also provided resource consent threshold alarms to inform the user and Environment Canterbury Environmental Protection staff that a river's trigger level or cut off level had been reached, rate of take exceeded, daily or weekly volume exceeded, combined rate of take exceeded, etc."

The monitoring system will eventually be implemented across the region. Which will be timely this year as Canterbury farmers have started irrigating at least a month early following a drier than usual winter and early spring.