No done deals as council seeks freshwater solutions
With reference to most of the statements made in Tim Gilbertson’s Talking Point on Saturday, I am obliged to offer a number of corrections.
Dependable supplies of freshwater are essential in Hawke’s Bay. For this reason, our overriding programme objective is that Hawke’s Bay has long-term, climate resilient and secure supplies of freshwater for all. In the Heretaunga catchment, the whole community relies very heavily on freshwater security — including two cities, industries, businesses and irrigators — not just horticulturalists.
A dam to provide an environmental solution for tributaries in the Karamu¯ catchment is being investigated at Te Tua, but no decision has been made to build a water storage dam there.
This would first need community consultation, and a go-ahead decision by the Regional Council. The Regional Council is in the early stages of investigations for Heretaunga and is keeping the community up to date with its progress. As the CHB community already knows, developing water storage at scale in any catchment is an incredibly complex and uncertain undertaking.
The Heretaunga communities do not assume that they will have the option of community scale water storage as a part of a set of solutions for the future. There are no done deals. The former Ruataniwha storage scheme in Central HB was not canned by the Regional Council. It was left stranded, after the Supreme Court decision in July 2017 denied the Department of Conservation land swap necessary for the dam to be filled.
In addition to expending $20 million plus on the now stranded Ruataniwha scheme, the Regional Council had also set aside $5 million to investigate water storage options in the Heretaunga catchment. In 2019, councillors supported staff recommendations to re-allocate some of that funding to re-visit viable water solutions in Central HB as part of a broader Regional Freshwater Security programme. The Regional Council then applied to the government’s Provincial Growth Fund and through that process CHB projects in fact ended up with more funding than for Heretaunga.
Contrary to Mr Gilbertson’s claims about five dam sites in CHB, the Regional Council is not intending to revisit any small dam sites in Central HB. This is clearly stated in a project report from September 2020. We are investigating Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR), which is a tool used in more than 1000 schemes around the world. Gisborne District Council has recently completed a trial with positive results. Our ambition is to validate MAR in the CHB environment in the first instance.
Mr Gilbertson is a passionate advocate for the CHB community and appears convinced of the one solution, in which he holds a pecuniary interest. The risk of backing just one horse is the possibility you are just left holding the ticket. We are not competing against Mr Gilbertson and I encourage both he and his advisers acknowledge that HBRC has, and continues to look for, a portfolio of water security solutions for this community.
Tom Skerman
Regional Water Security Programme director
Clean up after dogs
Re dogs at Anderson Park Napier. Would the owners of large dogs please follow your dog or dogs and pick up the by-product after them.
I have had enough of stepping in or nearly stepping in it and wearing it. Thursday at the kids’ playground there was some on the grass near the edge of the path and . . . you would have known if they had gone to the toilet. If you can’t clean up, then maybe be you should not own a dog? Best idea is to get a cat. At least they bury theirs.
Len Reeves