The Kangaroo Island Council has called an emergency meeting of agencies in Adelaide on Monday to seek expert help and support over the water issues affecting the council’s Development Assessment Panel.

The DAP, through its planners, has been applying the “25 per cent guideline’’ from the Department for Water Land and Biodiversity Conservation to development applications, particularly for forestry.

Mayor Jayne Bates told the council on Friday that the guideline was “causing extreme grief” for the council, which had received little support from the department.

“Kangaroo Island is seen as a test case on this guideline and we have received little help from the department in what is becoming a costly and resource-hungry case,” Ms Bates said.

The council is in the Environment and Resources Development court, defending two appeal cases where it has denied forestry applications by Great Southern, based on the guideline.

“The water guideline and the science behind it are extremely complex,” Ms Bates said.

The central point of disagreement between Great Southern and the council is about whether the 25 per cent guideline should be applied on a per-property basis or on a whole water catchment. Deeper arguments centre on how much water forestry uses.

The guideline is not easy to simplify and has not been tested but in layman’s terms it means that 75 per cent of the rain that falls on a property (or a catchment) should be allowed to flow from it, that is, any use of the land should not take more than 25 per cent of the rainfall.

The guideline was developed by the department in 2006 to be used where no better information existed.

Ms Bates said representatives of the department had failed to show at several conciliation meetings and court hearings in relation to the appeals.

The meeting on Monday will involve senior people from the Local Government Association, the Department, Primary Industries, Planning SA and the Natural Resource Management Council.

“We are trying to look at the bigger picture, to find a way forward for this, for forestry and for the island,” Ms Bates said.

“There is no way to know at this point what the court will rule and what that ruling might mean for the island. The science is complex and without some clearer guidelines this could go on for a long time.”