Here and now, no matter how the figures are analysed, the cost of building and servicing a high dam is spiralling out of control.
The John Maynard Keynes aphorism ‘no risk no gain’ is, perhaps, valid if you are gambling with your own capital.
However, determination to pursue a potentially gamechanging but risk-fraught expenditure of public money should be monitored by an oversight authority that is divorced from enthusiastic amateurs.
Despite Mayor Richard Kempthorne’s amiable charm his extraordinary determination to progress the Waimea Dam proposal was never going to be heaven-blessed, and the financial risk involved is potentially beyond the TDC’s remit.
The history of schemes to store and distribute water is just one of several issues that are significant road blocks on the way to resolving ways and means of coping with the increasing demand for improved infrastructure to deliver water to town and country.
The level of obfuscation and contradiction around the council’s positioning in the on-going campaign for greater public and private access to water comes with the territory.
A dam on the high ground above the Waimea plain is a timehonoured solution.
That said, public reaction suggests the Tasman District Council and their private enterprise partners, Waimea Irrigators, have not made a sufficiently compelling public case to proceed unhindered with the increasingly expensive venture.
The escalating, long-term cost of such a proposition is not resonating with the majority of ratepayers. And it doesn’t help that the increasingly frustrated rhetoric from the proponents is sounding a tad self-indulgent.
The frustration is understandable. The time to drive serious progress within the local body political cycle is running out, as is the commitment to the concept from the private shareholders, Waimea Irrigators.
Superficially the plan appears to be relatively straightforward.
The council, in a joint venture with a private enterprise partner, will build a dam and associated infrastructure to store and supplement demand when necessary. This plan will ensure continuity of supply when local home-owners and the arable industry on the Waimea Plains come under pressure. The wider Tasman district will finance, but not necessarily benefit from, the presumed infrastructural boost to the local economy over an unspecified number of years.
Stored water will be available when needed and the local economy, as well as the health of the Waimea River, will flourish. The region will garner a considerable boost in production, the river will regularly be cleansed of run-off pollutants and a perceived threat to domestic water supply will be alleviated. All associated with the exercise will be rewarded accordingly.
Maybe; but there are a range of variables involved in such simplistic propositions.
In the not too distant past, in this country and around the world, similar presumptions have been made and have been found wanting.
Here and now, no matter how the figures are analysed, the cost of building and servicing a high dam is spiralling out of control.
Challenges to the quality of the proposal from international scientist, Dr Roland Toder, and respected Wellington-based economist, Peter Fraser, supported by a chorus of well-informed observers and commentators should not be sidelined.
On his own volition local chartered accountant, Ian MacLennan, has compiled a forensic and, on the face of it, damning analysis of the costing of the proposed dam and a range of informed critics have lambasted the process.
‘‘Economics according to Elvis Presley’’ is but one observation from an economist well-versed in the history of similar projects. Advice from another source suggests that even the latest $102 million estimate for the proposed dam is wildly astray
In recent years estimates surged from $26 million, to $40 million, to $82 million. In the last month an estimate of $110 million has been contradicted by informed critics suggesting $150 million, or more, after infrastructure work is completed, is probable.
No matter where the mix of shareholding might land, repayment from the both the private and public purse will ultimately compound into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, the loquacious Coalition Minister of Provincial Growth, Shane Jones, has given critics of the proposed scheme a verbal slap around the ears for questioning the wisdom of the council plan and colourfully suggesting that sceptics should pull their heads in ... or words to that effect.
The minister’s somewhat florid approach to debate is entertaining but, on occasions, disengaged from reality. In fact in the world of responsible politics there are checks and balances, and those in central government that approve criteria for assisting with public finance are not generally swayed by a ‘build it and they will come’ optimism.
21st century science now offers a sophisticated menu of far less expensive and more pervasive opportunities to harness and distribute water in a controlled environment.
If this coalition Government is presented with a reasonable, balanced, forward-looking water retention and distribution proposition that will assist in developing the Waimea catchment for a range of industries and interests, the chances of a budgeted, well-planned development fund are excellent.
Forging ahead on the back of a clearly flawed plan should not be an option.
Devising an alternative solution to what will continue to be a local economic imperative should be a given.
Meanwhile, the TDC might like to consider finding and resolving the problem of a water distribution system that is apparently losing 40 per cent of its content into thin air.
Here and now, no matter how the figures are analysed, the cost of building and servicing a high dam is spiralling out of control.