Dan Elderkamp: Regional council needs to stick to knitting

Dan Elderkamp.

With reference to Bruce Bisset's column of Sept 23rd (Biggest shingle pile in the bay), he highlights just how much of the information and detail on which the Ruataniwha dam's case is predicated was worked out on the basis of assumptions, speculative modelling and guesswork.

With regard to gravel and sediment build-up I've been able to glean some additional information to support his assertions.

The question should be asked, how did the Regional Council and HBRIC arrive at the quantities and rate of sedimentation and gravel accretion behind the dam wall, should it be built?

I have it on good authority that they have never done any actual surveys of gravel and sediment movement down the Makaroro river, so they have little factual historical data to support their modelling.

On the main river stems such as the Waipawa and Tukituki cross-sectional surveys are done on a regular basis to enable a relatively accurate picture of gravel build-up to be formed over time. This has not been done on the Makaroro.

Therefore the only conclusion I can arrive at is that all the quantities and costs of future sediment and gravel build-up and removal from the dam are based on an educated guess at best.

How have they factored in extreme weather events? I've tramped up the Makaroro river on a number of occasions, and as anyone who's been up there can attest, there have been some very large slips into the river in the past 50 years or so, with the scars still very obvious.

I'm told of cyclone Alison in 1975, when vast quantities of metal and sediment were washed down the river, significantly raising the riverbed level, and damaging several bridges on SH50.

Also, as Bruce reasons, why would anyone buy metal extracted from the dam at a significantly higher cost when there's more than enough available near the main towns at far cheaper prices?

As it is, the Regional Council has an impending problem on its hands with gravel build-up in the rivers, to the extent where in some places the riverbed is higher than the surrounding farmland, leading to water-soaked paddocks in winter which don't drain.

They need to find buyers for the metal closer to home first, but the truth is there aren't many buyers at the moment, and those that do buy far less than what needs to be removed to keep riverbeds at current levels. So the question is, what to do? Extract metal and build a huge stockpile which no one needs, or raise the stopbanks? And guess who'll end up paying for that?

As I was informed by a certain councillor at the time, "the community must decide". But how can the community decide when most are unaware that a problem exists, and are uninformed as to the true extent of said problem? And with every year that passes the problem grows bigger, until eventually the stopbanks are breached during a future extreme weather event, resulting in flooding.

If only the Regional Council would stick to its knitting, and concentrate on what its core functions are under the RMA, then we might all be a lot the wiser by now.

Instead they've needlessly wasted between $16m and $20m of our money on the dam so far, which could've been applied to pressing issues such as gravel build-up and serious water quality issues, such as with the Papanui stream.

This wastage could have been prevented if the Council, and in particular the five councillors who've consistently voted for continuing with the dam process contrary to all logic and common sense, had done their homework before embarking on this ill-conceived scheme.

Clearly we need a change of the guard, and that is my hope for the current election.

- Dan Elderkamp is a candidate for the Central Hawke's Bay seat on the Hawke's Bay Regional Council in the upcoming local government elections.