The site of what would have been the Ruataniwha Dam. Photo / File
Central Hawke's Bay's mayor is defending her council's decision to help with the financial stress of a group that owns the rights to the failed Ruataniwha dam project.
A $330m plan to build the dam was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2018, despite almost $20m of expenditure by Hawke's Bay Regional Council on consents and planning.
CHB District Council passed a motion to provide financial support to Water Holding Hawke's Bay (WHHB) for the purpose of assisting with the annual "science charges" by HBRC.
A grant of $58,000 was asked for by WHHB, which was granted at a CHBDC meeting last week.
Central Hawke's Bay mayor Alex Walker said the funding grant is consistent with the council's view on the importance of water security in CHB and was tagged from a reserve fund during Annual Plan 2019/2020 process.
"It's our view that addressing water security, and the ongoing associated environmental and economic challenges in our district will never be solved by a single, silver-bullet approach," she said.
"The agreement to provide funding to WHHB is purely about keeping options open for our community when it comes to addressing water security issues in our district.
Walker added: "This is a vital issue for the future of the district."
Forest and Bird freshwater advocate Tom Kay said the funding was unacceptable, with ratepayers continuously being asked to invest in a "failed scheme".
"For $58,000 you could work with farm systems modellers to optimise 20 farms to use low irrigation management techniques and significantly reduce the need for water anyway," he said.
"WHHB was well aware of the ongoing financial charges they were going to face every year and should bear that. Otherwise they should drop the consents."
WHHB director Tim Gilbertson said it doesn't have the money to pay for the charges itself.
"We're five individuals who started this on behalf of the community – four of us are old age pensioners," he said.
At the recent meeting, all but one counsellor voted to grant the fund.
Deputy mayor Kelly Annand, who voted against the funding, said she accepts the decision.
Walker added that the Tukituki Leaders Forum has been engaging with HBRC specifically on their work, funded by the PGF, to assess options for addressing water security issues.
"It has been made very clear, at every point of this process, that the group is not there to 'choose' options but to provide a wide mix of community views to both the issues and the potential solutions," she said.
Minister for the Environment declines fast-track Tukituki plan change
The Minister for the Environment David Parker has declined the Hawke's Bay Regional Council's application to proceed with a fast-track plan to change the way nitrogen leaching is modelled on farms in the Tukituki catchment.
HBRC applied to use a streamlined planning process for a proposed plan change to update the "drafting gate" for estimating farm-level nitrogen leaching.
This process is used to assess whether farmers fall under restricted discretionary or non-complying activities for consenting.
Parker said in a letter to HBRC the application was declined because freshwater planning now had to be considered under the new Freshwater Planning Processes, under the recently enacted Resource Management Act Amendment Act 2020.
HBRC ground manager regulation Liz Lambert said staff are working through options for estimating nitrogen losses from farms for the drafting gate and will present these to the Regional Planning Committee on August 19, 2020.
Lambert said she "can't speculate further" on whether the use of the Overseer tool to assess nitrogen, which is under review, was a factor in the minister's decision.
- Additional reporting by RNZ