Mike Williams
Last year's Havelock North drinking water disaster made around five and a half thousand people sick, put forty-five in hospital, probably killed three and has "unknown further health implications" according to the inquiry findings published this week.
It made the news in London and damaged Hawke's Bay's hard-won tourist image.
The local economy took a severe hit.
It's easy to forget just what an impact that this crisis had on Havelock North.
Local resident Robyn McLean eloquently wrote: "I've never encountered anything like what has happened in Havelock over the past week. The streets are empty, shops are empty - the feeling as I get my morning coffee is so eerie, you almost expect to see tumbleweed rolling through the town centre. A week after the outbreak started, the politicians roll into town to make the most of the media opportunities. They tell us what we already know. "This is not acceptable," they say. "This can never happen again," they trumpet. You can almost smell the hand sanitiser on their mitts as they reach out to shake hands".
As though they are following a "Pike River precedent" where twenty-nine mine workers were killed and no-one was held responsible, local politicians have run for cover.
This is just intolerable and this refusal to accept responsibility by people elected to provide basic services like clean water cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.
I took a strong interest in the inquiry which followed this calamity and particularly noted the evidence of Russell Baylis, joint owner of the long-established Baylis Brothers Welldrillers. Mr Baylis reported that the heads of the wells (in Brookvale Road) which were the source of the poison had not been properly maintained over many years. It seemed pretty obvious that Mr Baylis had isolated at least one of the proximate causes of the pollution which led to the disaster.
I asked a friend with years of experience in local government who exactly was responsible for ensuring that that well-heads in Brookvale Road were properly maintained.
She told me that, as part of its resource consent, the Hastings District Council would have been given responsibility for developing and implementing maintenance schedules and that the Hawke's Bay Regional Council would have been responsible for ensuring that the District Council executed those programmes.
This just didn't happen and the Inquiry report includes the following.
"The District Council did not properly manage the maintenance of plant equipment or keep records of that work; and it carried out little or no supervision of necessary follow-up work.
And:
The District Council at no time prior to the 2016 outbreak had a written maintenance and inspection programme for the three Brookvale Road bores.
If this incompetent administration wasn't bad enough, it seems that no-one learned from a similar outbreak eighteen years before. The Inquiry report says:
"The District Council did not embrace or implement the high standard of care required of a public drinking-water supplier, particularly in light of its experience of a similar outbreak in 1998, and the significant history of transgressions (positive E.coli test results).
When the disaster struck, the Hastings District Council was not prepared for it.
The inquiry states:
"There were, however, significant gaps in readiness, such as the District Council's lack of an Emergency Response Plan, draft boil water notices, and up-to-date contact lists for vulnerable individuals, schools, and childcare centres".
The above quote is truly stunning.
Hawke's Bay suffered an awful earthquake in 1932 which killed two hundred and fifty people and yet the Hastings District Council had no Emergency Response Plan.
The report adds up to a litany of incompetence, complacency and plain stupidity.
If the outcome is to have any lasting effect, then heads must roll starting with that of Mayor Lawrence Yule.
Mr Yule was on the council when the 1998 pollution incident occurred.
He witnessed what could and did go wrong and seems to have done nothing.
He was the long-serving leader of an organisation which utterly failed in a core responsibility, poisoned thousands and was unprepared when the inevitable disaster struck.
It's not good enough to point the finger at some unidentified "middle manager" as Mr Yule seemed to do on Radio New Zealand; he was paid hundreds of thousands of ratepayers' dollars over many years to get these matters right.
The buck stops on his desk.
If Mr Yule's national and international pursuits distracted him from his core responsibilities that can't be an excuse.
The honourable path would be for Mayor Yule to fall on his sword right now; however given the blustering, buck-passing stance he's adopted since the report came out, this is unlikely.
He'll be gambling that the local folks and especially Havelock North voters will have forgiven and forgotten all by September and put him into Parliament.
I doubt it.
We'll see.