"That's why we have an interest in water storage - it's one way of having your cake and eating it too - if you can provide enough water to meet all those values everyone holds dear."
He hoped opponents of the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme were not piggy backing on the growers' dissent.
"I have no proof, but you have to wonder."
He said Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated chairman Ngahiwi Tomoana's comments that protesting growers' preferred candidates could prevent the scheme from proceeding were contrary to the iwi's position to date.
"Every conversation that we have had with iwi is that mauri of the river is paramount. That's about moana, food from the river, health - a whole lot of things that over-extracting waterways does not deliver."
Critics had challenged the council findings on the Twyford aquifer, he said, "but nobody could produce anything that was robust and different".
"I'd love to say we've got it wrong, but it doesn't look like we have."
