Dan Elderkamp.
Councillor Alan Dick's talking point of March 30 is nothing more than a spin exercise, designed to discredit councillors Barker, Beaven, Belford and Graham.
Alan complains bitterly about not being given an opportunity to express his views at the meeting they organised.
Alan, they were organised to put their points of view to the public, not yours.
If you and your pro-dam colleagues want to express your points of view and refute theirs, please organise your own meetings. We challenge you to do so, because then ratepayers will get the opportunity to ask you all their still-unanswered questions. There will be no place to hide, as the public-excluded option won't be available.
Regarding Alan's other accusations and misinformation, let's look at those a bit more closely. Firstly, his allegations re "the legal challenges and tactics of so-called environmental lobbies like Fish & Game and Forest and Bird - ideologically opposed to farming and particularly irrigation" - nothing could be further from the truth. The so-called environmental lobby is exercising its legal rights, and if Councillor Dick and his pro-dam colleagues had done their homework before giving the dam the go-ahead, they would've saved ratepayers millions.
Also, let's not forget that the so-called "financial close" for the dam has been delayed seven times to date, because HBRIC has been unable to sign up enough water users to make it viable. Pot calling the kettle black, Mr Dick?
It's likely to be delayed at least once, if not twice, more in an attempt to make the 45 million cubic metres they need. Or will it be tortuously extended until the magic figure is reached? Please, advise ratepayers when the final "final close" date will be?
Secondly, he accuses us of being ideologically opposed to farming - really? I'm a farmer, Alan, and I love it! What we do oppose is toxic farming - pollution of groundwater and rivers for profit, and the ideology that this water is there for HBRIC and its mates to exploit, regardless of how it affects other water and river users downstream. Neither are we anti-irrigation. After all, grape growers and horticulturalists irrigate their vines and orchards but need vastly less water than dairying, which uses 800 to 1000 litres of water to make just one litre of milk. We need smarter, targeted irrigation, not more dairy farms. In fact, without dairy the dam is not viable, so the argument can be made that HBRIC is promoting farming methods that use vast quantities of water wastefully to reach their target.
Thirdly, he spins the tired illusion that the dam will offer "major environmental gains" - this is quite laughable, to be kind. There's a list of ecologists and environmental scientists as long as my arm who will disprove Alan's claims. The only gains that there might possibly be is to reverse the environmental damage done through HBRIC's over-allocation of groundwater to irrigators.
Has anyone noticed the proliferation of pivot irrigators in CHB over the last five years? Whatever "gains" will be more than outweighed by the environmental destruction the dam will cause - destruction of rare braided river bed, already rare and threatened native species, and biodiversity which will take several hundred years to recover, if ever.
Fourthly he says 2500 new jobs will be created. He's more optimistic than Andrew Newman, whose latest estimates have reduced to 2000.
Can you please advise in greater detail, Alan, which is true and where in the region these jobs will appear? How many in CHB, and where, if "mostly not on farm"? How, exactly, will CHB benefit from this economic miracle?
He concludes by calling us "doomsayers". It's a pity that he has resorted to name-calling, which is the usual tactic when someone can't come up with rational and factual arguments.
One thing which I do agree with him on is that rational decisions will be made fairly soon, and later, this year.
The sooner, the better.
- Dan Elderkamp is co-chairman of CHB Forest & Bird.
- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz