Legal challenge delays dam project

Ruataniwha Dam. Photo / Glenn Taylor

The deadline for a decision on whether the Ruataniwha dam is built has been pushed back for the second time in three months. The project's backers are citing uncertainty over pending High Court legal action.

In late April the scheme's promoter, Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Company (HBRIC), shifted its crucial "financial close" deadline date from June 30 to September 30, as it continued talks with potential investors and irrigators.

Now, HBRIC says financial close will, even under a "best-case scenario" not happen until "late in the fourth quarter of 2014".

That is because the Eastern Region Fish & Game and the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, have gone to the High Court to challenge a board of inquiry decision granting resource consent for the scheme and setting in place a related environmental management plan change for the Tukituki catchment.

In a paper prepared for a meeting of the regional council on Wednesday, HBRIC says financial close - having funding confirmed from investors for the $275 million scheme plus sufficient water-use agreements signed with potential irrigators - cannot happen until legal challenges are resolved.

"A more detailed assessment will be possible once hearing schedules have been determined by the High Court," the report says.

Meanwhile, HBRIC has used its monthly update report to the council to answer questions councillors raised about the company's application for resource consent to take 15 million cubic metres of groundwater a year from the Tukituki catchment.

Regional councillors have complained that they only heard of the consent application, lodged with their own council, more than a month after it was submitted in May, and from sources outside the council.

HBRIC has been able to apply to take the groundwater as a result of the board of inquiry ruling that the volume of groundwater permitted to be drawn from the Ruataniwha aquifer could be increased from 28.5 million cubic metres a year to 43.5 million cubic metres a year.

HBRIC said the proposal intended "to distribute the benefits of secure water to as many parties as possible, which is entirely consistent with council's own water strategy".

"The groundwater may be utilised for irrigation in peripheral areas, improving reliability and/or further optimising the distribution network," the company said.

"This application and the logic for it, was tested with representatives of the Ruataniwha Water User Group and it was, in turn, traversed by that group themselves."