Councillor Christine Scott puts up as an alternative to the Ruataniwha Dam the idea of on-farm storage. Unfortunately is presents the case as an either-or. It is a false dichotomy; a straw dam. This is very much part of the problem with the whole dam debate; the assumption that we live in a mechanical world of narrowly-defined, largely single-function, hard engineered solutions - big dams or small dams; and they all presented as black and white with very dodgy and selective criteria such as cost per unit storage. It is not just about dollars. It is much more to do with maintaining and enhancing functional integrity - of our economy, and of the community and land upon which that economy depends.
That sort of ridiculous cost criterion would rationalise the insane - the command and control one big mill approach to development with zero resilience in a future world defined by uncertainty, and a necessarily industrialised view of life and land. That sort of myopic logic is the classic problem we face in our provinces - our emphasis on the big and the homogeneous. It has been an failure as a primary sector strategy. It has made us poorer, with less money circulated locally, degraded social conditions and a less functional environment upon which the economy depends. It is a famously extractive economic model, not a creative one.
The alternative diverse value model - the creative economy - has been thrashed to bits in these pages, and it is noticeable that proponents of the dam choose not to debate those broader strategic issues because they know that cheap dross corporate farming is an indefensible strategy.
As a substitute for open dialogue, we get more responses that completely misrepresent the issues and narrow the scope to an adversarial boxing match. The dam should have been about dialogue towards understanding where we are and what Hawke's Bay future we could have. We should have started with the questions and the understanding, and progressed from there to solutions. We didn't. The dam started as a propaganda mission with the cynical Tukituki Choices document, and went from bad to worse. Now the tactics are selective spin, cynical redefining of environmental "HBRC flows" as a product for the people to buy, and straw men.
The Council ought to come out of its disturbingly siege mentality edifice to authoritarianism, and engage in some questions with a clear purpose of making our place better. Where are we heading environmentally, socially and economically? What drivers are taking us there? What can one sector teach another? Does production of less diverse commodity represent a bright future for our people and our land? If not, then what alternatives? At present the debate is disturbingly myopic - from talk of increased production (while 'balancing' the environment), cheaper labour and more car parks for retailers.
