The commercial agricultural sector is one of the strongest economic sectors in the South African economy and supports a vast value chain from the local to an international level. This holds true in terms of the traditional dryland farming but even more so where the crop fields are irrigated. The yields are much higher but similarly the inputs to reach the higher yields are also higher in comparison with dryland farming. SPOOR assisted the Thinus Maritz Boerdery (PTY) Ltd. Farming operations in obtaining the necessary environmental authorizations for a set of dams on their properties and also managed the water use licence applications for these dams. These applications also necessitated the inputs of a set of specialist consultants to determine what the impacts of the dam developments would be and furthermore to provide the competent authorities with the reporting that they require to be able to licence the irrigation infrastructure. Although the majority of the dams were licenced in the positions applied for the South African Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) requested that alternative localities be investigated for some of the dams. These investigations were carried out and presented to the Department. The process of authorizing the alternative dam localities is in its final stages.