No support as cheaper dam proposed

The four councillors - Rick Barker, Peter Beaven, Tom Belford and Rex Graham - were unable to win the support they required from other councillors. Photo / Glenn Taylor

A bid by four councillors to get Hawke's Bay Regional Council to investigate the feasibility of building a cheaper alternative to the Ruataniwha water storage scheme has failed to get off the ground.

But the group say they will now seek private funding for the study.

The four councillors - Rick Barker, Peter Beaven, Tom Belford and Rex Graham - were unable to win the support they required from other councillors to advance the idea at a council committee meeting on Wednesday.

They wanted the council to investigate "a modification" to the current Ruataniwha irrigation scheme which would still involve building a water storage dam on the Makaroro River in Central Hawke's Bay, but with a minimal network of piping to distribute water to farmers.

Reducing the piping network, and instead using natural waterways to distribute water from the dam, would halve the cost of the $275 million project, the four councillors believe.

The council's corporate and strategic committee spent more than an hour considering the proposal at Wednesday's meeting, including receiving a presentation on the issues involved from chief executive Liz Lambert and resource management group manager Iain Maxwell.

Mrs Lambert concluded her presentation by saying all the concepts raised by the four councillors to reduce the cost of the scheme had, in one way or another, been put forward, examined and discarded, during the course of pre-feasibility and feasibility studies into the Ruataniwha scheme.

The current $275 million irrigation scheme proposal that has been adopted by the council "brings together the optimum package for cost, water uptake and price", she said.

The alternative proposal was "not hydrologically feasible", would increase the cost of water water from the scheme, would raise environmental regulatory issues and could "jeopardise extensive arrangements already negotiated" in relation to the scheme.

Regional council chairman Fenton Wilson said while the intentions of the four councillors to investigate options was good, it would be "foolhardy" to backtrack on the years of work that had already been done in developing the scheme.

"We've been through a process here, as far as Ruataniwha goes, to find the best outcome. We've explored most of what's in front of us already.

"If it worked, we'd be doing it," he told the meeting.

Mr Beaven said after the meeting he and the other three councillors backing the alternative study all supported the idea of a water storage scheme for Central Hawke's Bay.

They wanted the issue of a cheaper alternative explored because they were concerned the price of water under the present proposal was discouraging farmer interest in signing up to the scheme.

He said the group would now try to secure private funding for a study into the feasibility of the alternative proposal.

"We've had a couple of people who we've run this idea past who've said if you can't get the council to fund it come to us, we'll see what we can do to help."

The intention was to present the findings of the study at a public meeting being planned in Waipawa next month, he said.

"Let's take it to the farming community and see what they have to say about it."