$36.9m dam quandary set to tax new council

A decision on the Ruataniwha dam may not be made until November 30 - the first meeting after this year's local body elections.

The decision to spend an extra $36.9 million on the Ruataniwha dam in the face of overwhelming public opposition, could be left up to a new council.

According to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council meeting agenda for this Wednesday, due to more information wanted by councillors on the environmental flows, a decision may not be made until November 30 - the first meeting after this year's local body elections.

Regional council chief executive Liz Lambert reports to councillors that at the June 8 meeting councillors were asked for their view on the purchase.

She said a consistent theme in the views was "a lack of clarity or certainty of the location and scale of the problems in the catchment" that such proposed flows would address.

"Clarity around the options and specific detail for the use of environmental flow water has therefore been requested to enable an informed final decision on whether or not to invest in the environmental flows to be made by November 30 2016," she said.

Ms Lambert said the reason that the decision had been pushed back was currently there was no capacity in the council's science team to complete the work required to the level in the timeframes set.

She said as such an external consultant with requisite qualifications and experience in environmental flows and aquatic ecology will be sourced to work with key staff to complete this work.

The work, which could begin in July, will cost somewhere between $30,000-$50,000, Ms Lambert said, which means the council's annual plan will need to be amended.

While the environmental flows made the agenda, two noticeable absences from the docket are the monthly update from the council's investment company HBRIC and the long awaited Deloitte report from its peer review of the Ruataniwha dam's business case.

Chairman Fenton Wilson said the reason for the first absence was HBRIC "don't really have a lot to add" over what was presented to councillors last meeting.

"The discussions are getting close to an end that much is evident, but there has been no report as such added," he said.

In regards to the Deloitte report, while he was "hanging out to see it as much as everybody else", he was not too concerned about its absence.

"It's not there because they [Deloitte] are still waiting for further information," he explained.