But we need to have a vision, work collaboratively and avoid “blunt instruments” in isolation of a total strategy.
We need our environment to be vibrant and healthy alongside a strong economy that creates employment and wealth in our region.
In the face of climate change, Heretaunga is blessed with a simple and affordable solution unlike most of our neighbours in NZ and the rest of the world. We can affordably store water in the winter when it is abundant and release it into our environment in the summer.
We have a raft of commercial and domestic water users; some, like our growers, need the water for only a short period during the summer months, and some of our other industries need it the whole year.
In the past, the economy has taken preference to this unique resource at the cost of the environment and this is not acceptable or sustainable. We need to fix the environmental challenges while we continue to support our growers and our industry who underpin the jobs and the wealth of our region.
We are in the fortunate position of being able to do both for relatively low capital cost because we are blessed with a win-win opportunity and I am amazed we don’t get on with it.
The challenge is that we have strong demand for irrigation water over the summer and this affects the water table and often results in the water levels in our streams and waterways dropping, some drying up entirely. This harms our wildlife habitat, especially tuna.
Most of our water users take water from the aquifer and they should be able to continue to do this, but this needs to be supported by water stored during the winter
We have two projects in the planning stage that will create about 25 million cubic metres of water storage at a cost of about $300 million and be predominantly for environmental use with only small direct commercial applications, ie, we store the water in the winter from high river overflows and release it into the Ngāruroro River and the Karewarewa/Paritua Stream respectively. The water released into the Paritua will pass through Bridge Pā and Pakipaki on its way to the Karamū, maintaining the stream’s water level in the summer during high irrigation use.
The use of augmentation, such as is now used on the Raupare Stream that was a brilliant initiative by the local growers, should be continued and extended to other streams not directly on the Karamū.
Our commercial water users need to take all their water from the aquifer and all stream and river takes need to be phased out.
The community should put up the capital and invite other interested investors such as tangata whenua and the Government to invest. The annual operational costs and return on capital should be funded by all water users through an environmental rate. This will be a relatively small cost when put across all users.
We could exclude ordinary householders and health providers from the environmental rate.
This is an easy and obvious solution to manage our water resources for the benefit of our environment and still allows us to grow our economy into the future.
We all know climate change is here to stay and at times we appear to be at ground zero in this regard — the next event is likely to be a very serious drought.
If we don’t prepare now we will sleepwalk into an economic and environmental disaster with tremendous negative consequences for our region and for the economic and social health of our people.
Let’s just get on with this.
