The vote of the 11 Regional Councillors won’t occur until Wednesday, but ‘word on the street’ is that Napier’s Hinewai Ormsby has the numbers to prevail if CHB’s Will Foley, who has been contesting, chooses to stand on the day.

Hinewai would become the Regional Council’s first Māori chairperson.

Hopefully this outcome will prove more than a victory of symbol over substance.

A key hope of those making the case for Hinewai is that she potentially will be better suited as Chair to coax other Māori leaders to support water storage projects. However, internally the Māori community is just as fractious – with personality clashes, different agendas, turf protection and policy disputes – as the Pākehā community. 

There is no Māori leadership silver bullet, just competing power centres. Witness the recent ‘retirement’ by Ngati Kahungunu voters of Ngahiwi Tomoana, who spent decades building mana – yet succumbed to new forces.

So, good luck to Hinewai on that assignment.

From a ‘values’ standpoint, those inside and outside the Council looking for a Chair with a strong environmental commitment will find reassurance in what Hinewai had to say in her re-election campaign. Below are excerpts from responses she gave to questions BayBuzz posed during the campaign. Soon she’ll have the opportunity to deliver. And having focused on the environment and Napier, she will need to dig into the financial side of the organisation and widen her geographic scope.

As for Will Foley, he would make a fine Chair, bringing progressive farming experience and attitudes, fiscal caution, wide relationships and maturity of judgment to the post. One would expect his colleagues will acknowledge those qualities as other positions of HBRC leadership are allocated in the coming week. 

Councillor Hineway Ormsby on the issues …

On water storage:

“I won’t be supporting a Frankenstein like re-awakening of the Ruataniwha Dam project. I think this is something we need to move forward from as a Regional Council.

Investment in water storage schemes is outside the mandate of an environmental regulator tasked with both protecting and managing our natural resources for future generations. There’s clearly a place for water storage and our teams can form a part of that picture whether it be contributing to the science and knowledge base across our Region. However, water storage needs to be sustainable, equitable, and meet the Ministry for the Environments statutory obligations of Te Mana o Te Wai.”

On HBRC’s role in climate change:

“In our responsibility as an organisation we need to show leadership and be taking the practical steps that are targeted towards both preventing and mitigating the potential harms from climate change which includes 2 critical projects that we’re accelerating in my first term as a Regional Councillor below:

• Progressing our “Right Tree, Right Place” program of works which acts to tackle climate change in a number of ways including carbon sequestration, as well as locking sediment into the land when the inevitable flood events occur which smother our waterways and sensitive receiving environments. 

• Implementing the Ahuriri Regional Park which will aim to create almost 300 hectares of a world leading carbon sequestering wetland that will create habitat for sustaining natural ecosystems and will also polish water before it enters the Ahuriri Estuary.
  

We also need to be sure the region is resilient to the punishing consequences of climate change which includes severe flood events occurring with more intensity and frequency. A critical project we’ve delivered on in my first term is Point 3:

• Strengthening and upgrading our flood protection schemes protecting our major rivers from flooding. 

From a personal perspective I think both as a society and as individuals we need to do all in our capacity to prevent climate change. That is why alongside my husband Cam I’ve personally grown and planted 12,000 native trees alongside waterways in Napier and have just finished potting up a further 2,000 more ready for planting next year. “

Regarding the sometimes ‘testy’ relationship between HBRC and other councils when it comes to enforcing environmental regulations …

“Regional Council also has a key role to play in collaborating with Councils to find solutions for improving water quality. A perfect example of this is the Ahuriri Regional Park which sees joint long term planning funding allotted to the development of this wetland by both the Napier City Council and the HBRC with support from Mana Ahuriri. The Regional Park will receive the majority of Napier’s urban stormwater for filtering and polishing received water and will ensure the chronic discharge of sewage and other contaminants to the Ahuriri Estuary is a thing of the past. Without collaboration and partnership between Councils and Iwi such an initiative would never occur. If you talk the “no excuses accepted” policy in regards to the health of the Ahuriri Estuary we’d still all be at square 1 in terms of environmental health, with the only winners being the lawyers and the losers being us the ratepayers.” 

Regarding supporting the new National Policy Statement on Freshwater requirement – codifying Te Mana o te Wai – that future water management must give first priority to protecting the environment, second to providing for human health, third to potential economic use …

“In principle yes. Because you can’t eat money when the environment can no longer sustain us. Essentially this is a recalibration so we can lock in the certainty of being able to have healthy people and economies which are entirely dependent on a healthy and balanced eco-system. We need to think intergenerationally when it comes to our natural world and systems and not just concentrate on the here and now.”

Regarding ‘Are there limits to growth in Hawke’s Bay?’ …

“Of course, there are growth limits particularly when it comes to extractive industries for which there are finite resources to extract from whether it be land, water quantity, or environmental limits.“