I opened the recent HB Regional Council paper, titled Potential options for Regional Water Security, with great anticipation last week.

Finally, I thought, some serious attention is being paid to the full spectrum of ‘water security’ options for the region, and especially for the hitherto neglected demand or conservation/efficiency side of the equation.

But I was disappointed.

The paper, discussed immediately after a fulsome presentation of progress on the Heretaunga Dam proposal, was cursory and conservative in its presentation of wider options.

A truly logical exploration of regional water options would make equally robust and penetrating investigations of current water use, supply and demand. And if future supply and demand were found out of balance, analysts would look with equal rigour at ways to decrease demand and use water more wisely, as well as ways to increase supply, especially if overuse was deemed harmful to the environment.

That did not happen with HBRC’s Regional Water Assessment (RWA), delivered in 2023, which now has biblical status.

Plenty of modelling of drivers of rising need, but superficial attention to suppressing demand, be that household, industrial or irrigation use. Yes, rhetorically, a range of interventions that might curtail demand were described, but their actual potential contribution in terms of volume was never probed.

Instead, the RWA simply reported that saving 1% against future demand was really hard, and would still leave a shortfall requiring additional supply. While saving 2%, which could actually produce a future water surplus, was characterised by advisers as virtually impossible. That’s become the HBRC narrative … the creation myth for both the Heretaunga Dam and the New Testament version of Ruataniwha Dam 2.

And that’s nonsense. Real world experience indicates very substantial water conservation and efficiency gains are available, but the RWA didn’t delve into the real world evidence at the time. Time was short; Councillors wanted a creation myth. 

However, a rumoured $1 million allocation was set aside for the purpose of looking deeper into demand, which senior staff acknowledged this week is still sitting in the HBRC bank account.

Hence the current importance of getting that work done … seriously done. My read of HBRC’s discussion of this last week is that such investigation is a nuisance and too hard.

A distraction from and less important than busily spending $3 million to expedite the Heretaunga Dam (supply) project.

There may well be a case that the Heretaunga Dam is needed at a cost of $250m or so to mitigate against expected future rain shortfalls. At a glance, that case appears likely be far more compelling than resurrecting the hapless Ruataniwha Dam 2!

But it might also be the case that interventions to lessen water requirements could be highly effective and deliver more bang for the buck, without curbing growth or damaging the environment.

Shouldn’t we want to know the answer?

And how far down the Heretaunga Dam path should HBRC get before it has those answers?

HBRC is already eager to hand the dam project over to a so-called ADV (Alternative Delivery Vehicle), a commercial entity which would be constituted entirely by water users. The org charts are ready; the seats at the table being awarded. Surely ADV will have no mission to look at a bigger menu of options.

The cart seems before the horse here. That seems to be a pattern with HB dams.

HBRC staff have been charged with coming back to Councillors in late July with some sort of workplan that would begin to address the demand side of the equation (as well as additional supply options). Will it be serious or perfunctory? When will it yield answers? And how seriously will those be taken?

That’s a report I can’t wait to read!