History matters … and is fast becoming central to the future of our regional water management. In 2023, local leaders and landowners will need to come to terms with history, if they are to find a solution for Bridge Pa water and thus unlock the impasse over broader water issues in Hawke’s Bay.
Pre-colonisation, the rivers and streams of the Heretaunga Plains provided its highways and supermarkets. Already heavily modified by its early inhabitants, the countryside was a myriad of constantly shifting and mixing waterways, wetlands, fernlands, inland islands and bush remnants. The easiest way to get around was by canoe and the waters teemed with life.
These days, we have channelised the rivers and streams to allow permanent settlements and to exploit the fertility of the soils created by those pre-colonisation processes. In unlocking the productive potential of the soils, we have created great wealth and supported a much larger resident population to an overall high standard of living. Much of the wealth is exported from the region in the form of food and fibre, supporting the wellbeing of others and returning materials like vaccines and iPhones to support our modern lifestyles.
In human terms, this can be considered progress, a success. But climate change, biodiversity loss and declining water quality clearly indicate that we have been borrowing against future generations and against the environment itself to achieve such progress. And the benefits of progress have not been equitably shared.
Whilst we contrive to maintain the productivity of our soils via the importation of fertilisers from the other side of the world (especially phosphate), we largely overlook the damage that has been wrought on freshwater systems by channelisation, extraction, removal of shading, increase in soil erosion, discharges of all kinds and introduction of foreign fish species.
All this history is relevant today in regional water politics … empowered by Crown efforts to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and by regulation compelling local government to take real account of Te Ao Māori worldviews.
It all comes into sharp focus at the epicentre of regional water contestation, the Paritua-Karewarewa Stream at Bridge Pa.
Important aspects of the Paritua Stream history, hydrology and causality remain contested. However, it is undisputed that the community at Bridge Pa in recent years have sufferred a loss of access to local groundwater for household use and a total loss of flow in the Paritua Stream itself, for extended periods of time during summer droughts.
The local communities, especially the neighbouring Marae of Korongata and Mangaroa, have been understandably upset. They occupy land adjacent to the stream, their people occupy most of the homes in Bridge Pa and they have relied on the waters for sustenance in all its forms for generations.
In response to HBRC planning processes such as the TANK Plan which encompass these waters, that upset has coalesced into coordinated opposition, with reach from Bridge Pa into the Heretaunga Taiwhenua and Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated. Beyond our regional boundaries, in the national discourse on Māori rights and interests in freshwater, the Bridge Pa situation is held up as an example of current failures.
Paritua Stream is the epicentre of regional water dispute, not just because it is a lightning rod for Māori water grievances, but also because the stream stands to be a key element of Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s Heretaunga Plains water security efforts.
Existing infrastructure already delivers water from the Ngaruroro River at Maraekakaho, through to the Paritua Stream, via the Glazebrook water race and Te Tua Dam, operated for many years by Mike Glazebrook, using diversion channels built by his father, part of a stock water channel network that used to dissect the local landscape. This infrastructure is key to unlocking an efficient and cost-effective scheme to store water to augment Karamu River flows downstream of Bridge Pa and thus improve the water quality of the Karamu.
Referring to the importance of the Bridge Pa situation, a key message delivered by regional Māori leadership at the latest meeting of HBRC’s ‘All-Governors’ Forum was that “We’re only as well as the sickest part of us”. This group, meeting regularly, combines the 11 HBRC Councillors, representatives of 9 Hawke’s Bay Treaty Settlement Partners and the 13 Taiwhenua members of HBRC’s Māori Committee. All future HB water policy will take shape under the watchful eye of the All-Governors Forum.
There have been various efforts by the Marae, HBRC and local landowners over recent years to find a solution for Bridge Pa. But resolution has been elusive, given opposing worldviews, differing views on causality and differing priorities.
Solutions do exist but not without some pain, cost and compromise all round. Until very recently, hydrologists conceived the groundwater resources around Bridge Pa as being part of one big highly-connected bathtub – the Heretaunga Plains aquifer – fed largely by a relatively small stretch of the Ngaruroro River, upstream of the Fernhill Bridge. Work now underway by GNS Science strongly indicates that the Bridge Pa groundwater is mainly rain-fed from within its own catchment and is only slightly connected to the Ngaruroro River.
This new way of understanding Bridge Pa water resources points towards an over-allocated local groundwater resource, which would drive a regulatory requirement to eliminate the over-allocation. That will only be possible by either scaling back irrigation consents, augmenting the water supply, or most probably a combination of both. Whilst this is likely to come at some financial pain for local landowners, the success of the Twyford Irrigator’s Group provides a working example, where a combination of consent-sharing and stream flow augmentation has resolved local issues.
For HBRC Councillors, working with Iwi on partnership arrangements for water in Hawke’s Bay, via the vehicle of the All-Governors’ forum, will be a dominant narrative for 2023 and beyond. I believe that resolving the issues at Bridge Pa will be key to unlocking the creative potential of landowers and mana whenua to work together to improve waterways throughout Hawke’s Bay, whilst at least maintaining our living standards that are inextricably linked to our stewardship of water.
As a local Bridge Pa resident and irrigator, I am strongly committed to making resolution of the Bridge Pa problem a top priority for 2023. A solution will require goodwill, creativity and compromise on all sides and is by no means assured. But it would be a landmark precedent, with huge benefits flowing through to both urban and rural residents throughout the Heretaunga Plains.
Xan Harding
Regional Councillor and Bridge Pa grape grower
I think you will find d there are too many cooks.
Thanks Xan – well worded, and carefully trodden!