Bruce Bisset: Dam plan brims with conflicts

Bruce Bisset.

There's not a lot of comfort in being right sometimes, especially when it concerns a billion-dollar project that makes little sense. I've said from the get-go the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme (RWSS) was presented as a given, and that's now very near to being the case.

No obstacle has proved enough to derail it. Not loss of early backers, nor higher water standards for the Tukituki River, nor "unexpected" challenges to conservation reserve land swaps, nor escalating costs that make the over-optimistic economic modelling more dubious.

Not even having to delay "financial close" seven times until enough landowners could be persuaded to sign up for an initial contract for supply to make it over the designated line for a break-even operation - if that actually has been achieved.

Or the rumour - now exposed as fact - that the region's major asset, the Port of Napier, will be Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Company's (HBRIC) guarantor for any loans it needs to raise to achieve the 6 per cent dividend it is promising its parent body, the regional council, and other backers. All of which could mean the "one dam to rule them all" concept will be not a boon but a bust for Hawke's Bay; a bust all except a privileged few, able to make capital gains from in-zone holdings, will end up paying for.

Speaking of privilege, it's no secret that some of the members of Central Hawke's Bay's District Council (CHBDC) should benefit from the scheme going ahead, if only via a rise in land value for property owned "in the zone". Their championing of this project, including offers for CHBDC to back it in cash, to buy wholesale water, and latterly approving buying water for at least two townships, has been the subject of complaints to the Auditor-General's office over perceived conflict of interest. Similarly the council's CHB representative, Debbie Hewitt, could be called into question over her apparent pecuniary interest in land which, since the expansion of irrigation zones last year, is within the area of supply. She denied a conflict of interest at this week's regional council meeting.

Councillors walk a fine line in not declaring such interests. To paraphrase the Local Authority (Members' Interests) Act 1968: if in doubt, leave yourself out.

If Ms Hewitt were conflicted, with the council split the way it is on this issue, that would leave the chairman, Fenton Wilson, having to make a casting vote to carry the day. A billion-dollar scheme approved on a chairman's casting vote? Not a good look, especially when conventional process has it such votes should be used to maintain the status quo.

Of course this is speculation, but then many would say the whole scheme is. Costs have already proved to be speculative, making the economic returns even more speculative, and the "spin-off" benefits of job and wealth-creation remain pies in the paddock. Even if the dam and irrigation network do prove a boon for CHB, at what cost to the rest of the region if the port becomes burdened with dam-related debt? And at what cost to the existing intensive agriculture of the Heretaunga Plains, which may never see a similar scheme to protect it from climate change. Which is exactly what should have happened instead. Oh, I know the promoters and those farmers bold enough to buy into the rhetoric and the considerable personal investment will say the fact the scheme has triumphed over so many obstacles proves it is worthwhile. And who knows, maybe it will be. But nevertheless, the RWSS is answering the wrong question. And in the wrong way, in the wrong place. We are all conflicted in this.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.