Letters to the Editor: Friday, 23 September, 2016

Some of the protesters outside the Hawke's Bay Regional Council, Napier. PHOTO/DUNCAN BROWN

Candidate's Facebook post regrets

Yesterday, Hawke's Bay Today published an article on a comment I made to a friend on my personal Facebook page.

I would like to apologise unreservedly to anyone that my comment (since deleted) offended.

My personal profile, although personal, is publicly available.

One of my policies is to communicate openly and honestly and I stand by that as I feel a public figure should be transparent, especially when they have made a mistake.

The comment I made was not intended to belittle the mental health issues faced by far too many in our community, or the numerous friends I have counselled through issues they have experienced.

As soon as I posted the comment, I deleted it, because I saw that it could be easily misinterpreted, but not before a Hawke's Bay reporter saw it.

I will continue to have a public personal page because I still believe that, as a public figure, I need to be transparent.

Please message me if you wish to discuss anything.

Adrienne Pierce
Hastings district councillor/candidate for Mayor of Hastings

Narrower road

A text in Monday's paper stated that J Maxwell was incorrect in writing that the roadworks in Joll Rd had made the road narrower.

The anonymous person who sent the text was actually the one providing readers with misinformation and I was 100 per cent right.

I was able to forward the editor an email from HDC's transportation safety engineer, Tony Mills, who met with me and a group of locals on Joll Rd to discuss the new traffic islands, confirming the roadworks had narrowed the road in places.

Mr Mills should know. He is the safety engineer overseeing the project.

Jessica Maxwell
Havelock North

Defence of dam

It was disappointing to read Rex Graham's negative position on the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme (the "dam") (Talking Point 11/9/16) and again the same short-sightedness is expressed by Tom Belford (Talking Point, 14/9/16).

They are in tandem, determined to bust the dam. Both men seem to be a single issue regional council candidates, playing on people's misunderstandings from the misinformation they have given out over the years on the dam and the Tukituki River (ably assisted by the Greens with their pranks) all to get votes.

They don't offer a view on anything else - just stop the dam.

And, on the dam, their approach seems to be that if the CHB towns tidy up their sewage issues and that if we get rid of repugnant feedlots and farming practices near the river, we won't need the dam and all will be well.

That approach is, of course, naive in the extreme, wholly incorrect and even if achieved, the river will continue to struggle.

For a start, the biggest issues the river struggles with are the climate-induced factors of drought and evaporation.

They are silent on dealing with these.

A dam would be a perfect solution to such climate pressures, releasing fresh clean water in summer and autumn when the river struggles the most, diluting the algae and toxins that accumulate (whether there is farming nearby or not) with low water flows.

Without a dam and even without farming the river, in our climate, will struggle and develop toxins and generally create environmental issues.

In respect to the farming nearby, the Tukituki catchment area covers the whole of central HB down to Haumoana on the coast and we know that the run-off from all of the farms affects the river, so what are Graham and Belford proposing?

Perhaps they are proposing that all farming between Haumoana and Dannevirke be banned?

Put all of the Tukituki catchment area and CHB back into forest? Such a step would annihilate the CHB towns, kill half the jobs in Hastings and a similar number in Napier and devastate the Napier Port.

And it would crash house prices in HB too, the only place in NZ to go down in value, leaving the good people of HB with little for their retirement.

HB is already poor and, thanks to Graham and Belford, we would get poorer.

And who is going to pay for the reclaiming of the land and planting such a huge forest?

It will cost a thousand times what the dam costs, and unlike the dam, it will be paid for exclusively by HB ratepayers.

And what about developing HB economically? Again Graham and Belford offer no ideas.

Just no dam, no, no, no.

The dam is good answer to deal with the range of issues, environmental and economic, to deal with the issues facing HB.

Yes, we need to get on top of the very poor farming practices but that shouldn't be instead of stopping the dam.

We need to do it all.

The dam is not perfect, as nothing in this world is, but it is a realistic approach to balancing the rights of us all to access clean water in our rivers for pleasure and purpose as well as for the need to have water for production to maintain and develop our economy.

Graham and Belford don't seem to care about all that.

Seemingly not interested in the betterment of HB, or the Tukituki River, they just throw out smokescreen objections to the dam to get a seat on the regional council.

I am wrong. It is not disappointing, it is an outrage.

John Thompson
Havelock North