Councillors offer alternative dam proposal

On Friday, Councillors Barker, Beaven, Graham and myself offered an alternative dam proposal that we believe is superior to the $300 million scheme (plus another $300 million in on-farm costs) advocated by HBRIC and five of our HBRC colleagues.

As argued in the proposal, we believe our approach reduces key risks inherent in current HBRIC scheme, while still accomplishing the key goals intended for water storage at roughly half the cost, and therefore deserves public consideration.

In my view, our more affordable proposal poses less risk to the environment, because both the effectiveness of the new water quality safeguards and the actual reliability of dam water supply would be established in practise before unconstrained farming intensification was encouraged.

As Councillor Beaven said in releasing the proposal: “Water storage is critical to the Bay’s future. This alternative option reduces risk to ratepayers and gives us a lower cost opportunity to grow the region’s economy.”

Our proposal is pasted in below and attached here as PDF.

As you will see, we are asking HBRIC’s assistance in fully vetting our alternative. Our Council has spent nearly $20 million attempting to make a case for the silver bullet some believe will transform Central Hawke’s Bay into a Garden of Eden. Surely ratepayers deserve a careful look at a reasonable alternative.

We will seek Council support for vetting our proposal at upcoming Council meetings this month. So far, HBRC Chairman Fenton Wilson has not yet made a public comment. However, HBRC/HBRIC did manage to make same-day delivery of our proposal to Irrigation NZ chief executive Andrew Curtis, who immediately dismissed it as “naive”, even though it is built upon core aspects of the HBRIC scheme.

As Councillor Barker describes: “This proposal is an affordable two-stage option. The first, for this generation to build the dam that will protect the Tukituki, while providing significant increases in irrigation capacity for economic growth. And the second, leaving a platform for a future generation, should they chose, to make a similar-sized, second-stage investment in the more efficient but costly piping system.”

Councillor Graham sums up our goal: “We need to find a commercial solution that allows our farmers to successfully manage their business’s in harmony with the environment.”

Stay tuned.

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