The Government’s Regional Investment Fund (RIF) has announced it is allocating “up to $3 million” to the Tukituki Water Security Project to “investigate the technical, environmental, and commercial viability and design of water storage site and distribution network on the Makaroro River”.
The project – a replay of failed Ruataniwha Dam 1 – has already achieved preliminary ‘fast track’ status in the Government’s pending legislation, although sponsors will need to go through the formality of officially applying when the procedure is legally in effect. Minsters have indicated this would occur in the late January/February window.
It seems odd that fast track approval is granted before $3 million of taxpayer money will be spent to determine if the project is actually viable.
But hey, HBRC spent $20 million on ‘viability’ during the last crack at this dam – Dam 1 – without having the right to flood the conservation land that would sit behind the structure.
Presumably the fast track process will remove this pesky Supreme Court obstacle with the stroke of the pen, making Dam 2 if not viable … at least legal by fiat.
RIF guidelines stress that the monies the Fund will award are to be conditioned upon matching funds from the project funder. Thus the reference in the announcement to funding of “up to $3 million” implies that the Tukituki Water Security Project will need to supply some cash of its own.
Indeed Mike Petersen, Tukituki Water Security Project chairman, tells BayBuzz the grant “will be matched by contributions from the community”. If that happens, then a $6 million exercise, all in.
Interestingly, he notes further: “As repeatedly reinforced, we are not requesting Council or ratepayer funding during this pre-construction phase of the project.” Hmmm … taxpayer = ratepayer; not pre-construction, but possibly construction phase? Watch this space.
Of course the need for and viability (both environmentally and financially) of this scheme must still be established. Note that there’s a HUGE difference between the case for greater water security in Hawke’s Bay and the case for Dam 2 (or 1).
So far the superficial case for Dam 2 is: It’s dry in Hawke’s Bay … the entire region might face a 25 million cubic metres water shortfall by 2040 … river water just empties into the sea … so let’s build a billion dollar dam in Central Hawke’s Bay to store 100 million cubic metres of water.
That case doesn’t hold water.
I’m personally against the dam – mainly on ecological grounds – but also on the use of water to allow dairy operations in CHB area – this is a dry land farming region and dairy shouldn’t be operating where they have to drag huge amounts of water out of the ground just to make themselves viable. Can’t remember the figures but something like 5 gallons of water needed for every gallon of milk produced? If, and I definitely mean “If” the dam proceeded their should be a mandate that there will be no expansion of existing dairy farms and absolutely no new dairy farms established – under any circumstances – and limit operations needing excessive irrigation. But I guess this Government will do their best to ram through legislation allowing their mates to destroy the environment in the name of the public good aka profits!
It’s the same water that Qualified Water Authorities highly recommend as being unsuitable for swimming,and publicize,don’t allow dogs to have contact with,yet seems to be seen as suitable for irrigation for food growing.I am well aware some countries use sewerage discharge for food production.Is that New Zealand looking forward or backward?Put the horse before the cart,and clean the Tuki Tuki river up first.
2000 % right on it!
Rough calcs on water use projections from when hbrc tried hard to push this dam showed a serious lack of logic. It could be I misunderstood some of the water use projections but none of it stacked up as viable then so why would that change. 100million cubes of water sounds like a lot , firstly though you have to collect it. While the debate raged hbrc still allowed access to the monitoring of flows on the Makaroro, I occasionally checked these at the time and seldom saw flows above 4 cumecs. at this flow you are looking at 280 plus days to collect 100 million cubic mtrs of water if you stop the flow completely. This amount was stated to be able to irrigate 17000 hectares, to raise this to 25000 hectares the council then introduced tranch 2 water from the previously over allocated aquifer. My main issue with all of this is where is all the water for hydro power , flushing flows and recharging aquifers coming from? Hydro is very high use, for perspective the Waikaremoana scheme would use the whole 100million cubes in a month, so that seems an unlikely use. Water storage and end use is a very emotive subject and needs careful consideration, a good start would be if all parties involved were open about the facts so we could make an informed decision rather than a political one.