Solutions sought for Ongaonga water woes

SOLUTIONS NEEDED: HBRC chairman Rex Graham says there needs to be a solution for small communities struggling with drinking water supplies due to surrounding farm irrigation practices. PHOTO/FILE

Hawkes' Bay Regional Council chairman Rex Graham says small communities like Ongaonga should not suffer due to nearby intensified farming affecting their ability to access water.

Last week Hawke's Bay Today published a story about some of the Central Hawke's Bay village residents being forced to spend a lot of money on new pumps and installing new bores to gain access to deeper water for their household use.

Residents spoken to noted the problems only began when large-scale agricultural irrigation started up in the surrounding area, which they believed had caused the water table to drop below the level of their existing bores and pumps.

Mr Graham and CHB mayor Alex Walker met with one of those residents, Ian Franklin, last week to discuss the situation and what help could be offered to those residents.

"We need to come up with solutions for these small communities that are being hammered by the new farming practices, but there's no immediate fix," Mr Graham said.

Ideas mooted included coming up with something similar to the Heatsmart scheme, where the regional council lent people money to install sustainable fires, and could be applied to rainwater tanks, but he said that was something that would need to be considered by the whole council.

What the council would, however, be reluctant to consider was changing the consents of irrigator operators, given people made investment decisions around such water takes.

"Everybody has an interest here though to make things work - it could be water storage, it could be the way water is used."

An example was the practice of irrigating on the likes of a 32C, windy day, he said.

"There's valid questions about this practice, but also worth noting that because it's so dry farmers are needing to do that."

What couldn't be ignored, he said, was the fact that residents were in the unenviable position of driving 500 metres down the road to see irrigators pumping huge amounts of water onto maize crops, yet these people didn't have enough water to make a cup of tea.

"We need to figure out a way to provide a sustainable supply of drinking water.

"The last thing we want to do is take consents off people, we want economic development, but we want to make sure that economic development does not unnecessarily change the lives of the people who were already living there."

When asked if the Hawke's Bay Regional Council had over-allocated the water resource in the area, he said he was reluctant to talk about it in those terms.

"I think we have over-allocated water everywhere not just in Central Hawke's Bay, and we are starting to realise that even though rain does replenish the aquifer we are dealing with a finite resource and we are probably using more water than is sustainable and servicable at the moment."

Ms Walker said it was a constructive conversation in terms of gaining an understanding of the issues faced by the village.

"We talked about building resilience in the way we use water and the way we value water.

"I'm quite positive about the idea of a shared project around water tanks or some kind of shared scheme to build that resilience."

In the meantime, she said if there were any people in a true emergency situation in terms of getting water to their homes or storing it, they were welcome to get in touch with her.