Decision on dam consents

The site of the proposed 80-metre Ruataniwha Dam, over the Makaroro River. Photo / Duncan Brown

The company promoting the Ruataniwha dam says it has confidence the irrigation scheme will proceed after a board of inquiry released its final decision on consenting issues yesterday.

But one of the groups involved in a long legal battle against the project says the latest ruling is a significant victory for the environment and raises doubts about the viability of the scheme. Yesterday's decision which meant more farms would have to adhere to stricter nitrogen levels to ensure the local ecosystem's protection.

The Hawke's Bay Regional Council has tentatively agreed to invest up to $80million in the Ruataniwha scheme, which would deliver irrigation to large parts of Central Hawke's Bay.

The council's investment in the scheme - through its commercial arm, Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Company (HBRIC) - is conditional on several factors including it obtaining "workable consents" so irrigated farming in the Tukituki catchment was viable. HBRIC chairman Andy Pearce said yesterday the final board of inquiry decision gave the company confidence it had workable consents.

Yesterday's decision was "not significantly different" from a draft released last month, Dr Pearce said.

"We thought we could live with the conditions [in the draft decision] and we certainly think we can live with the conditions in the final decision."

0HBRIC would now continue with its efforts to sign irrigators up to take water from the scheme and secure further funding for the project. It is expected to cost $275million to build the dam and irrigation network, with about the same amount expected to be spent by farmers for their on-farm irrigation infrastructure.

Fish & Game, one of three groups to challenge an earlier board of inquiry decision through the High Court, said yesterday's decision imposed significant conditions on the catchment and was a "victory for environmental common sense".

"The environment can't be sacrificed to satisfy a few developers," Fish & Game chief executive Bryce Johnson said.

"Spending more than half a billion dollars on Ruataniwha to establish intensive agriculture in an unsuitable area defies logic. Such thinking means the environment inevitably becomes the casualty," he said.

Hawke's Bay regional councillor Tom Belford, a vocal critic of the scheme, said the final board decision would require farmers in the catchment to manage nitrate leaching on their property, contrary to the "spin" HBRIC had been putting on the environmental regime.

"It seems pretty clear that the board expects water quality to be improved," he said.

Irrigation NZ chief executive Andrew Curtis said the decision was a relief because it brought to an end a long process that would enable the dam to be built.

"Struggling communities such as Waipukurau and Waipawa will particularly benefit from the resulting economic growth," he said.

Groups involved in the board of inquiry process have three weeks to lodge an appeal.