Production Nurseries such as ERA that have a mainly Summer production regime use a lot of water. ERA has been acutely aware of the need to not only conserve water but also find alternative sources. It was this thinking that gave birth to ERA's innovative water recycling project.

ERA has also been aware that a major drought would come sooner or later that drought would seriously impact on our capacity to operate where severe water restrictions were applied. This prediction turned out to be true in a massive and quite cruel way as we all know

ERA has done everything possible over some years to avoid using Mains Water for irrigation. We have not used mains water for irrigation at the South Boundary Road facility at any stage for the entire 2006/2007 Summer irrigation season.

Part of this overall planning involved the purchase of two large water tankers intended to be on standby in the event of our dams being pumped dry. With these we have sufficient capacity to keep the operation running by carting water suitable for irrigation from sources outside of Hamilton.

Whilst these vehicles are on standby for our own purposes, we do make them available for carting approved disinfected water for customers requiring water for drinking purposes or for stockwater.

Water carting is not our core business and we therefore see the provision of these services as a means of off-setting the considerable costs associated with having this plant and equipment on the inventory.

Please download full details of this service, including costs from the PDF link in this page.