The $200m plan to irrigate the Bay

TWO dams, 75 million cubic metres of water, 25,000ha irrigated and $300 million for the region.
Hawke's Bay Regional Council's water storage plan is ambitious, expensive and complex, but council staff say the region needs something on this scale to manage water in Central Hawke's Bay.
CEO Andrew Newman said the council had been looking at water storage for about three years as a solution to summer water shortages in specific locations. While better management in some areas was sufficient to cope with shortages, the Ruataniwha Plains needed more than co-operation between water users.
The idea is simple: Store water in winter, use that water in summer.
"The community is interested in healthy rivers and good flow levels for recreational users,"Mr Newman said. "This will leave more water in the rivers in those summer periods."
Work still had to be completed to establish the potential benefit to the region but estimates indicate a boost to gross domestic product of $300 million a year, from a project that will cost $200 million to build. The area being investigated for the water storage infrastructure is mostly privately owned so there would have to be some kind of compensation, although what form that would take was not clear.
Landowners would pay to access the water from the dams, with the security of knowing their take was not vulnerable to low-flow bans.
"A project of this type has to be economically and financially feasible at the farm scale. Farmers need to be able to make a reasonable rate of return on their investment," Mr Newman said.
The simple idea is complex to follow through.
Water Initiatives Group manager Graeme Hansen said the feasibility study under way involved 120 discrete projects, a core group of 15 staff members and external consultants. It would be finished by July 2012 and, all going well, the resource consent process would start from there.
From the pre-feasibility studies to the end of the feasibility study the project cost $4.8 million.
"This is a large-scale, complex project by Hawke's Bay and New Zealand standards," Mr Hansen said. "This is the largest project considered since the days of the flood control schemes."
There are problems to work through, with geological and seismic issues being the biggest area of study. The pre-feasibility study looked at 18 sites but had now focused on justPAPERWORK: Graeme Hansen, Hawke's Bay Regional Council Water Initiatives Group manager, is overseeing the Ruataniwha water storage feasibility study incorporating 120 discrete projects. PHOTO/DUNCAN BROWN HBT110979-01
The Numbers
12 months to complete the study
$200 million cost to build
6000 hectares irrigated now
20,000 more hectares irrigated
$300 million increase in annual GDP
WATER FOR THE LAND
two after geological testing showed the others were unsuitable.
When the two sites were announced council described possibilities such as hydro-power generation and recreational uses that were advantages of having two big dams instead of a series of smaller ones.
There are environmental questions to be answered. More irrigation is likely to mean changes in land use. Environmental groups fear an increase in farm run-off and that landowners will decide to convert to dairy.
The council is running a $750,000 land intensification study, which is partly funded by the water storage project, and there is ongoing work to make sure it can improve the quality of the Tukituki River. This work was also included in a range of other water resource and environmental studies.
"We acknowledge that water quality in the Tukituki system has to be an integral part of this project," Mr Hansen said. "Our goal is to provide a win/win for the environment and economic prosperity."
Not everyone in the region was won over to the proposal.
Fish and Game Hawke's Bay manager Pete McIntosh said he was open-minded about the scheme but had serious environmental concerns.
The Tukituki was already in a poor state and with land use intensification there was the risk that more run-off would increase nutrients levels such as nitrogen and phosphorus, he said.
An enforceable system requiring landowners to budget for nutrients going on to, and running off, land could manage the issue. Fail to meet the requirements and have your water turned off.
There was also an issue with losing spawning grounds for fish such as trout, which moved up-stream to lay eggs.
"I'm happy for Hawke's Bay to be prosperous ... but not at the cost of the river," Mr McIntosh said. "If these things can be managed then I'm all for it, but that hasn't really worked around the country and I'm not sure what we're going to do that's better or smarter."
Fish and Game is a member of the Ruataniwha Water Management Stakeholders Group, which brings community representatives together to discuss issues and expectations of the project.
Group chairwoman Debbie Hewitt said it was vital to include community groups such as iwi, Department of Conservation, landowners and water-user groups.
About 22 representatives met every six weeks to receive updates.
"Getting everyone around the table is really important," Mrs Hewitt said. "I've been impressed by how it's gone.
"A lot of problems stem from lack of knowledge so involving people from the outset helps and everyone has been open-minded."
Issues from the meetings were taken back to council staff to be incorporated into the study.
A leadership group had also been established to focus on the market, economic and financial issues for the project.
Chair Sam Robinson said it was a forward-looking project with a lot of support from the community.
Surveys had shown most farmers were looking at the opportunity to expand into mixed cropping, rather than changing to dairy.
"My vision for the future of the region is a mosaic of land use across the area, facilitated by irrigation," he said.
A pre-feasibility study into water storage in the Ngaruroro catchment had recently been completed and the council was talking to community groups about whether it was also worth taking those proposals to the next stage.
Discussions about the Ruataniwha plans and potential for the region were consistently prefaced with "Assuming the feasibility study goes well ...", so what if after spending nearly $5 million the study showed the plans were not feasible?
Mr Newman said it was a significant issue. Recreational users were not happy with the status quo and irrigators did not have water security.
"If it's not we are going to have to go back and look at the whole water management system and what are the possible solutions in the current state," he said. "We are working on the assumption that we will be able to make it work."