Loophole allows DOC to swap land

Land needed for dam project

A LEGAL loophole could let the Department of Conservation swap away 23 hectares of Ruahine Forest Park, to be flooded as part of a proposed Hawke’s Bay dam project, without consulting the public.

Internal briefing documents show DOC advised Hawke’s Bay Regional Council that a con- cession to flood a section of the park was unlikely to be granted. Instead, a way around that would be a land swap, which was its preferred position, it told the council.

Under the Conservation Act, DOC cannot exchange conservation land for private land unless it has been downgraded to stewardship land. Before any conservation land can be reclassified, it must go through a public consultation process.

But DOC spokesman Rory Newsam said in this case, Ruahine Forest Park had never been ‘‘formally gazetted’’ as conservation land – though it was ‘‘deemed to be managed’’ as conservation land.

The admission raises questions about how much more land across New Zealand’s conservation parks is not conservation land.

For a land swap to occur in this case, DOC would need only to consult the Conservation Board, and local iwi, Mr Newsam said.

It would also ‘‘need to result in an overall conservation gain before it could be approved’’.

But because the land had not been classified, public submission could be bypassed.

Ruataniwha Dam project man- ager Graeme Hansen confirmed the council was already working to identify suitable land to swap.

Green Party MP Eugenie Sage said DOC should be protecting conservation land, not trading it away to be flooded with no chance for public comment.

‘‘The public expects that something called Ruahine Forest Park is fully protected as a park. DOC should not be able to use its incompetence in failing to gazette the land as conservation park, as a convenient loophole to give away public conservation land with no chance for the public to have a say. It raises a wider issue of how many other forest and conservation parks are parks in name only because DOC has failed to do the appropriate legal paperwork,’’ she said.

The dam, deemed a ‘‘project of national significance’’, has been embroiled in controversy since its inception.

Last month, Conservation Minister Nick Smith denied he meddled in the submission process for the dam.

A 32-page draft submission was prepared by DOC, raising concerns over the science being used to mitigate water pollution in the Tukituki catchment. But that submission was pared down to two paragraphs, which made no mention of the original concerns, and came after Dr Smith questioned the original draft.

The irrigation scheme would involve the construction of an 80-metre-high dam on the Makaroro River, storing about nine million cubic metres of water which would irrigate 20,000-25,000 hectares in the Ruataniwha Basin.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council has estimated the project will cost $232 million.