Alan Dick: Carping ill-informed and unfair

Alan Dick.

Continued carping criticism of the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme (RWSS) by Labour MP Meka Whaitiri is ill-informed and most unfair.

It is particularly unfair to the highly reputable members of the independent Board of Inquiry - who actually made the decisions on both the RWSS project conditions and the complementary environmental rules embodied in the new Plan Change 6 (PC6).

The five Commissioner members of the Board of Inquiry were highly experienced, well qualified and respected. Two had Hawke's Bay backgrounds including the chairman, distinguished High Court Judge Justice Lester Chisholm.

The board's work was thorough and comprehensive, hearing 406 submissions from expert witnesses and interest groups. Their work over a seven-month period resulted in nearly 200 pages of RWSS consent conditions and new PC6 environmental rules. Their conclusions were also tested for validity by the High Court.

The results will mean that land use in the Tukituki catchment will be comprehensively regulated to protect the environment - but with water storage minimising climate risk for farmers, land productivity can be improved while maintaining or improving water quality.

PC6 rules require higher minimum flows in the rivers, exclusion of livestock from waterways, farm environmental management plans with nutrient budgets and comprehensive monitoring of water quality - complementing these rules the dam provides water, not just for flushing flows to remove algal growth but also for managed releases to help maintain in stream minimum flows.

There are consent conditions requiring budgets to encourage biodiversity and riparian plantings, and oversight committees to ensure accountability, compliance and community engagement.

Ms Whaitiri's claim "that the benefits of flushing flows have been disproved" is just not true. The Board of Inquiry heard a significant amount of evidence on flushing flows and concluded that they provide a range of benefits for water quality and ecology.

The Board of Inquiry deserves far better than being accused of being the architect of a "dodgy dam".

I would have thought that rather than trying to kill the project and the new environmental rules (and neither will work without the other), Ms Whaitiri would get behind an initiative which will provide new and sustainable employment for the people she is supposed to represent.

I recall in a former life as Mayor of Napier that local MPs like Geoff Braybrooke and Parakura Horomia willingly assisted local councils to get their important projects done.

- Alan Dick is a Hawke's Bay regional councillor and former mayor of Napier.

- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz