CHB water plan a ‘band-aid’ solution
Residents of Tikokino and Ongaonga in Central Hawke’s Bay struggling with dropping water levels in their bores have been left unimpressed by a proposed offer of long-term, lowinterest loans from Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to install rainwater tanks.
On July 25, Ongaonga resident Bill Stevenson and Catherine Hobbs-Turner from Tikokino presented a 90-signature petition to the regional council outlining residents’ concerns about their bores and falling groundwater levels, which they blame on an over-allocation of water from the Ruataniwha Basin for irrigation.
The petition also states they are concerned about their ability to access adequate drinking water from their bores if the regional council grants consent to eight applicants seeking to extract 15 million cubic metres of “tranche 2” groundwater from the Ruataniwha aquifer.
The petition called on the council not to approve the additional water takes until it could be sure extraction would be unlikely to have an adverse effect on the townships’ wells.
In response, the pair say the regional council has offered residents access to long-term, low-interest loans — repayable through their regional rates — to install rainwater tanks under the council’s Sustainable Homes initiative.
In its Long Term Plan this year, the regional council consulted on borrowing $13 million over the next 10 years to provide financial assistance to help 1300 homes in Hawke’s Bay to become more sustainable. However, details of the Sustainable Homes policy are yet to be finalised and are not due to go before council for approval until September.
Regardless, Bill Stevenson said he and other residents were “not interested” in the offer of a loan.
“It’s just another charge against us ratepayers out here for the rape of the aquifer, which is what has caused all the problems,” he said.
He said those problems started back in 2004 with the commencement of large-scale irrigation near the two townships, and came to a head in 2012 when five homes at Ongaonga ran out of drinking water because of falling bore levels.
Last February, Tikokino’s volunteer rural fire brigade was reduced to relying on water from the pool at the local school to fight fires, after the station’s bore pump failed.
At the time the brigade’s chief fire officer, Mike Harrison, blamed the pump’s failure on it being overworked due to dropping levels of underground water.
Stevenson spent $6800 installing a new submersible pump for his bore last year.
He said the previous owner of his home at Ongaonga lived there for more than 30 years and measured the level of the bore every Friday. It had never been less than 2.1m from the surface.
“Last year it was seven-and-a-half metres from the surface and our pump couldn’t handle it.”
Hobbs-Turner was more diplomatic and said she was “heartened” by the sympathy shown around the regional council table.
But she said the offer of rainwater tanks — which could cost as much as $20,000 before filtration systems were considered — would not be feasible for the many elderly rate- payers in the townships. “It’s a bandaid solution and doesn’t solve the long-term problems,” Hobbs-Turner said.
She was grateful for the support shown by National’s Tukituki MP, Lawrence Yule, who wrote to regional council chairman Rex Graham and others last month after earlier meeting with residents.
Yule wrote that he supported the residents’ concerns about further groundwater extraction on bore levels and formally requested that the council undertake a “TANK-like” scientific review of the Ruataniwha Basin, similar to what it had done for the Tutaekuri, Ahuriri, Ngaruroro and Karamu¯ (TANK) catchments.
Bill Stevenson said a scientific study to establish the health of the aquifer and the impact of groundwater consents was needed “unquestionably”.