The Hawke’s Bay Regional Council currently allocates about 155 million cubic metres (cubes) of water to approximately 1,430 consent holders across the Heretaunga Plains.
Under the still hotly contested TANK plan, HBRC is seeking to rachet that number down to an “actual and reasonable” 90 million cubes.
In the meantime …
Information provided to BayBuzz by HBRC reveals that when used to the fullest, nearly 60% of the water allocated is extracted by the top 50 users.
These range from the Hastings and Napier Councils (delivering that water to your household) through to major industrial users (like Heinz Watties, Woolworks) to major growers (like Apatu Farms).
The data we reviewed covered water extraction over the past fourteen years. If we sum the highest annual actual uses by each of the top 50, the result is 52,306,132 cubes. As against the amount consented to these users of 87,516,733 cubes.
Each of the top nine users accounts for 1 million or more cubes per year in their maximum actual use year. Here’s what that list includes:
| Hastings District Council | 16,951,119 |
| Napier District Council | 10,674,975 |
| Heinz Watties | 4,924,062 |
| Lineage Logistics NZ | 4,224,444 |
| Silver Fern Farms | 2,520,614 |
| Twyford Cooperative | 1,322,422 |
| Woolworks NZ | 1,674,868 |
| Apatu Farms | 1,066,413 |
| HBRC | 1,003,047 |
As against these, some of HB agbiz’s other most familiar names are smaller scale but still significant users. For example, Lowe entities (662,735), Cedenco (599,577), McCain (424,283), Ravensdown (291,290), NZ Miracle Water (HB’s biggest water exporter, 168,575), Bostock (165,783), Brownrigg (110,525).
Collectively, these are the entities that would need to pay for any large scale scheme to build a dam servicing the water needs across the Heretaunga Plains.
Readers should note that the biggest users are the consumer and businesses drawing their water from HDC and NCC pipes and taps. One wonders what “reasonable” use should be for us … and how much we might be expected to pay in a user-pays environment!
For the serious student, here is the full data set.
Good article. Interesting! Thanks for digging into this type of topic.
So, if i read the information correctly then Napier has only used just under 69% of it’s allocation. If this is correct, why are the current restrictions still being applied? Or, is the real problem lack of storage and infrastructure?