Dam assets snared by locals for $100K
The idea of a dam going ahead in CHB is far from being dead in the water, it turns out.
Hawke's Bay Regional council announced last week it had sold the assets and intellectual property of the stalled Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme to three CHB businessmen for $100,000 – a mere fraction of the $20 million of ratepayers' money spent on the project before it was shelved.
While the sale might represent a poor rate of return on investment for the region's ratepayers, CHB residents stand to benefit.
The new owners of the rights to the scheme say they want to include the wider CHB community as they ``investigate every option available` `in regards to water storage, which might include building a dam on the same site on the Makaroro River as the original proposed dam, albeit on a smaller scale.
Newly-formed Water Holdings CHB Limited purchased the rights to the scheme following a process which publicly called for expressions of interest.
The Ruataniwha Scheme stalled following a Supreme Court decision not to permit the exchange of land needed for the dam footprint.
Following that, the regional council decided not to invest further, and subsequently wrote down the value of its investment in recognition of the impediments to the scheme's viability.
HBRC chairman Rex Graham said regional ratepayers had every right to be “annoyed” at the $20m writedown.
“Ratepayers should be deeply annoyed about the loss of their capital in this venture but hopefully the IP can now be constructively used to facilitate water storage options in CHB,” he said.
CHB Water Holdings said it was ``committed to acting on behalf of and in the best interests of the [CHB] community to explore and implement projects that support and enhance water storage opportunities for the social, economic, and environmental benefit`` of CHB residents.
The three directors of the company are Isaac's Electrical co-owner and director Gavin Streeter, CHB farmer and former CHB mayor and regional councillor Tim Gilbertson, and crop farmer Hugh Ritchie, from Drumpeel Farm at Otane.
Streeter said the trio were the only people to put money
towards the purchase, and he personally did not own land that would benefit from water storage.
However he had been a vocal supporter of the dam and helped organise the “Don't Damn Our Dam” rally in Waipukurau in 2014.
“I am pretty excited about where we can go from here, to be honest. Our job is to pick the project up from where it is now and move forward, so we have to investigate every option open to us.
“One thing we are going to do is definitely hold a public meeting, so we intend to be transparent from the start.
“The opportunity to purchase [the RWSS assets] hasn't been on the table long and a working group has been looking at what can be done, because there are serious water problems in CHB, as there are on the Heretaunga Plains, so something has to be done. Just in what form, we are not quite sure yet.”
Gilbertson, too, said it was early days but the plan was to undertake a “community-driven” investigation into water storage options that might have been “missed” in the original proposal, that would benefit all of the CHB community and “not just a handful of landowners”.
“The last thing we want to do is revisit the old days and reignite the old antagonisms. We want to sit down and have good look and we might find there are some resource consents that are useful, and some that aren't. So it's early days, but the consents are back in CHB where they belong, which is important.”
Gilbertson said it was “extremely unlikely” the original 80-metre-high dam proposed under the RWSS would ever be built.
While there were “no concrete plans”, he said one option might be to build a smaller dam on the same site on the Makaroro River, which would negate the need for the land-swap deal.
“If there was a dam to be built, it would obviously be on the Makaroro because all the work's been done there.
“You could use the original consents and just put in a much smaller dam up there, so you wouldn't be flooding that land, that's pretty self-evident.
“Of course the problem is, if you put in a smaller dam that increases the costs of the water per cubic metre, so it might not be [feasible] and you'd be better off [with farmers] putting in their own onfarm water storage,” he said.
CHB Mayor Alex Walker said she was “thrilled” that ownership of the consents and IP now resided locally.
“Congratulations to Gavin and his team of supporters for their commitment and leadership.
“It is great to know that water storage can now be considered in the toolkit for the future of water in CHB,” she said.
Groundwater fears
Meanwhile, concerned Ongaonga and Tikokino residents have petitioned the regional council seeking assurances about access to groundwater from the Ruataniwha Basin.
Between 2014 and 2017, eight applicants, including major dairy operations, applied to the regional council to collectively extract 17 million cubic metres of “tranche 2” groundwater from the Ruataniwha Basin.
The Board of Inquiry into Tukituki Plan Change 6 determined that an additional 15 million cubic metres a year of tranche 2 groundwater could be extracted as a discretionary activity if the adverse environmental effects, particularly on surface water flows and river ecology, could be mitigated by river flow augmentation.
But residents of the CHB townships have said allowing such a water take could have severe environmental and social consequences.
Resident Bill Stevenson said the townships had struggled with a depleting drinking water supply since 2004 when big irrigators began accessing the water. In 2012, five houses ran out of water and over the years many had to modify their existing bores to go deeper to reach the diminishing groundwater.
“I've done a rough estimate and I would say the people of Ongaonga have spent about $100,000 since 2004 on ensuring they have water.”
He said protecting the loss of groundwater recharge on shallow bores and limited surface water could be the most important step the regional council could take to meet the community needs for a reliable, sustainable, safe water supply.
In the letter to the council, the residents called on the council not to approve any additional takes of tranche 2 water until it could be sure such extraction would not be likely to have an adverse effect on the townships' wells.
“If access to shallow groundwater via existing bores and wells in Ongaonga and Tikokino cannot be protected, then the Hawke's Bay Regional Council needs to make provision to provide a convenient and suitable alternative solution at the cost of commercial consent holders,” the letter said.