The following questions from schools are answered by a water expert:

1. Could the storage ponds fill up with sediment from the Waimakariri River, especially after a flood?

2. When did irrigation start becoming popular?

3. How reliable is the electronics that control irrigators. Are there many maintenance issues?

4. Does Canterbury farming produce anything, that relies on irrigation, that is grown nowhere else in NZ and is important to world food supply?

5. Do you use filters in irrigation?

6. Has New Zealand used flood irrigation?

7. Why is Canterbury more irrigated than anywhere else in NZ?

8. Why do places like the Waikato not have much irrigation?

9. Are there new careers in water that were not around 10 or 20 years ago?