Get it right TDC

The Tasman District Council should hang its head in shame wasting ratepayers’ money again on making lawyers rich because it has not done its homework properly.

The proposed Waimea dam is 80 per cent about serving private irrigation interests and mitigating the environmental impact of extraction from the river and Waimea aquifers by irrigators.

To create a sham construct of a minority public interest in a council controlled organisation (CCO) to enable private interests to access council’s requiring authority powers is unethical and possibly unlawful.

To make insulting and disingenuous offers to land owners for compulsory acquisition shows a council with no ethics or appropriate corporate values.

It is clear that half our elected representatives are out of touch with reality and the vast majority of their constituents.

There are other solutions for water augmentation that do not need to commit this community to $460 to $560 million over 40 years to a scheme that will never be economically, physically nor environmentally sustainable.

It is sad the landowners affected are being bullied by a public body into having to spend money on lawyers to be fairly treated.

No wonder there is a worldwide reaction to ongoing misuse of public policy to concentrate wealth at the expense of the small person.