Hawke’s Bay needs to protect its economy and the wellbeing of our people and communities.
We must balance this against the need to protect our natural environment for which Hawke’s Bay is equally renowned.
And at the heart of protecting all of these things is a single common element: water.
There is no better example of the need to get this balance right than on the Heretaunga Plains.
The Heretaunga Plains are some of the world’s very best fertile growing soils, the cities of Napier and Hastings are located within them. They are the economic heart of Hawke’s Bay and home to the majority of Hawke’s Bay locals.
We need to be able to manage the risk of too little water, as well as too much.
A severe drought with crippling water shortages has a massive economic impact through lost production across the Heretaunga Plains, with flow on impacts to the wellbeing of families, businesses, and jobs.
When we think about maintaining and building a more resilient, prosperous, and sustainable Hawke’s Bay, we must acknowledge that Heretaunga is entirely dependent on secure supplies of freshwater for our towns and cities, our farmers and growers, our businesses and industries, and individual households.
We are rapidly moving from a time in which water was abundant at the bottom of a bore, to a future of constrained supply.
Like most major towns and cities across the world, we now need more tools in our water security strategy.
While just one part of a package of water security initiatives, water storage must now be a part of securing freshwater for all the people of Heretaunga well into the future.
A water storage facility in the right location and of the right size is often not available. When it is, it provides valuable choices that can sustain and improve our way of life.
If designed with the right principles, water storage can significantly supplement and enhance the health of our lowland rivers, streams and groundwater aquifers.
As our climate continues to change and our region continues to grow, we cannot protect our people, our economy, or our environment if we fail to secure the water upon which we all depend.
We recently completed a comprehensive assessment of our future water supply and demand, which showed that even with essential water conservation at real scale, our demand for water is unsustainable.
There is already a gap between supply and demand and, left unaddressed, this gap will continue to grow.
We need to take bold action now across a range of initiatives to secure our freshwater future.
One of those initiatives is water storage. We have just confirmed a preferred site to advance investigations into a new storage facility to secure water for the Heretaunga Plains. A comprehensive pre-feasibility assessment of the storage site has been successfully completed.
We will now move swiftly into an independent, robust feasibility phase before decisions are taken around resource consenting.
The proposal is for a 27 million cubic metre storage facility at Whanawhana, above the Heretaunga Plains.
The site is located within the catchment that naturally supplies the Heretaunga Plains and its aquifer. The reservoir, which would be developed upon a small tributary stream, will store water from across the catchment, including peak winter flows from the Ngaruroro River, for release in summer when our lowland streams, rivers and aquifer are under most pressure.
The project seeks to deliver balanced outcomes for the region, its people, and our environment. Storing and releasing water into the lowland catchment to offset the impacts of extracting water from the aquifer will help protect the health of the aquifer and waterways, including some of our taonga species that live within them.
At the same time, it will improve water security for the Heretaunga Plains and provide additional water to meet growth: for irrigators, industry, and the demands of our growing towns, suburbs, and cities.
If the project proves feasible, we will all benefit from a secure supply of water supporting our jobs and economy, and through improved health of our waterways.
Any new consents for irrigation enabled by new water supply will ensure water is used within a sustainable envelope.
In principle, the costs of the project will be met by those who most benefit, to ensure the burden does not unfairly fall on ratepayers.
Regardless of the inevitable complexity that comes with any major infrastructure project, the simple message remains that we can no longer afford not to act.
This project needs to be governed and driven by those who will most benefit from the water and, ultimately, pay for it.
Over the next six months, council will transition the governance and delivery of this project from council to an independent, commercially-focused entity representing major water users, iwi mana whenua, and representatives of local community interests.
This group will be better positioned to govern the project through the main disciplines that must at all times be considered: social, environmental, economic and cultural.
Assuming the project is feasible, this new governance entity will see the project progress through resource consenting through to construction.
We are proceeding with the Heretaunga option because it’s well located to meet Heretaunga’s demand; it captures and provides water within this critical catchment; and it is the right scale to future-proof Heretaunga’s freshwater supply.
We need to think about the Hawke’s Bay our children and their children will inherit; the Hawke’s Bay we leave to them.
Whichever way we look at it, secure freshwater is essential.
We must take the opportunities to develop the right storage projects now to secure our long-term future.
