Bruce Bisset: Damn big bits missing from puzzle

Bruce Bisset

THERE were two aspects of the Ruataniwha water storage scheme (RWSS) that disappointingly did not get covered at all in last week's Hawke's Bay Today-hosted meeting, and they're two "biggies": what happens at the end of the dam's life, and where is Plan B?

Regular readers will know my major criticism of the scheme is its attempts to answer the wrong question. In the face of climate change making the region drier, instead of mooting a "greenfields" expansion we should ask what is being done to protect the bountiful existing agricultural base that underpins our economy.

Currently, very little. Indeed, we're now giving away over a billion litres of top-quality water from the aquifers per year to overseas-owned bottling plants, with no real understanding of the impact on upstream supply in the future for our orchards and croplands - and urban communities.

Surely, even if the RWSS is a good idea, the regional council should be well down the track in planning suitable additional storage and supply for existing growers. But that's stuck in the "to do next" basket, kicking the timeframe for it out at least 10 years. If then.

And what if the RWSS fails to jump the hurdles it must to come to fruition? Where's the alternative: smaller catchment schemes that could be done on an "as-needs" basis.

That idea only rated a superficial once-over before being brusquely sidelined in favour of a "large dam" scheme, with most preliminary investigation focused on identifying and selecting a suitable large dam site.

Why? Apparently because the HBRC got hooked into believing a large dam was an "investment" scenario " something they and any partners could make money from " whereas a half-dozen (say) smaller farmer-collective schemes could initially cost more and might not provide council a return.

The relative risks and environmental benefits of the two concepts were never clearly compared " despite it being a regional council's overarching role to ensure development is moderated through such analysis.

So much for Plan B. Which brings us to the question of how good an investment the RWSS will be.

According to economist Peter Fraser, it won't; it will always need to be subsidised by the region's ratepayers " borrowing against the port. And even if the tweaked-to-shine HBRIC figures are correct, returns remain marginal.

Regardless, none of the economic models presented to date factors in the biggest cost of all: the cost of retiring the scheme.

See, it's considerably more expensive to demolish a dam than to build one. So even without counting the price of the irrigation network, in 70 years' time " the projected working life of the dam " ratepayers will be faced with a bill, in today's terms, of around $300 million to take it down.

And, having invested millions of their own in equipment to intensify production, without water to irrigate what will the farmers do then? Stop farming, I suppose.

But as one old boy outside the meeting said to me, "I'm 72. Why should I care? I won't be here then."

And that, in a nutshell, exposes the heart of the problem. Greed-fuelled instant windfalls, and bugger tomorrow - the antithesis of the dam's stated rationale.

Thanks to Andrew Newman, Fenton Wilson, Peter Butler, et al, we're about to create a huge debt burden for our descendants.

Oh, and a special mention for Napier voters, who elected most of the councillors driving this monumental farce. Perhaps we should ring-fence the demolition costs for your grandkids alone to cope with, eh?

That's the right of it.

-Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.