Steve Liddle: Benefits of dam must outweigh harms

As a citizen of Napier I believe I have been well informed by contributors to Hawke's Bay Today about the cost-benefits of the Ruataniwha Dam.

They have been selected to reflect a wide range of views, backed by science and authority.

Two current councillors agreed it is important to join the dots to decide whether the benefits are more than the costs for all the communities involved. Their final pictures came to opposing conclusions.

Although another candidate has given assurance the project won't be backed by the Napier port, and another proposed backing it by public bonds, all Hawke's Bay residents, including Napier, will certainly be affected by its economics.

Martin Williams' recent reasoned article on his "in principle" support was backed by his environmental credentials. And the fact that anti-dam proponent Dr Mike Joy is a current university lecturer in freshwater ecology, and Mr Williams an Honours student in ecology, certainly doesn't mean his science has been trumped. As John Key said when Joy called New Zealand's clean green self-image "delusional" in a New York Times article, Joy's science is just a view "easily countered by other scientists".

Yet Joy's revelation of New Zealand being at the top of OECD countries' river pollution statistics and his quantification of the Tukituki's severe upstream pollution have hard numbers. His own research and science, "dug out of journals and data not usually accessible to the public," has not been denied by those other scientists.

However Waikato's Professor Harrison said he was not at the top of his field "otherwise he'd be a professor" and another, Professor of Agri-business Jacqui Rowarth, while not denying the science, said farming possible by the dam could be pollution-proofed.

Naturally Dr Joy's statement that as most New Zealand scientists are employed by the Government they "have to watch their mortgages" did not go down well.

But he felt obliged, he said, to put the science out there because the Education Act 1989 gave to scientists' academic freedom a "critic and conscience function" to be used for the public interest. Since then there has been an increased commercialisation of education bringing with it potential for various conflicts of interest.

Tainted science and conflicts of interest come in many forms but Dr Joy's pollution findings have not been discredited. In this regard, it was interesting to read in HBT 30/9 that Martin Williams had conducted a coloured-bead-in-the-jar-poll on a Napier street after which he declared Napier was pro-Dam.

Such media-style polls are notoriously biased and more entertaining than accurate - especially given placement bias, avoidance distortions, margins of error and when fronted by those whose position is known. However, Mr Williams' billboard slogan "policies not politics" does make a good point. A better one could be "policies are politics". Increasingly an MMP-savvy public has realised that in representative democracy pre-posted policies are essential - especially when a decision-breaker in 5-4 voting changes his or her mind mid-term.

In this regard, the argument and numbers presented by Charles Hutchinson, Less pollution should be focus (HBT 28/9), is worth consulting for voters conducting "due diligence" before voting.

But if information about degrees of riskhas been sufficiently covered perhaps "opportunity cost" has been too easily dismissed. Defined as opportunities given up, or what you could get for the same cost, opportunity cost is an important concept in economics.

Leaving aside the flushing bonus a big dam would provide - Dr Joy maintains severe pollution upstream of the dam will not be affected by regular sluicing but fish will - more water will create wealth. Whether in tall dams, bottles or smaller storage ponds.

What should be pushed back against, however, is a progress that suits only agri-business or huge scale orchardists with no local stake - or run by perpetual managers at the expense of owners who can make a living on the land, of the land and with the land.

And the full costs of dam water are no guarantee of that. Surely the economic question always has to be: are jobs at the moment worth the costs you spend in generating them.

For the cost of the proposed dam there could be not just shared farmer dams built with low-cost loans but waste treatment plants alongside every town in Hawke's Bay - including Napier - keeping rivers clean and providing both methane for energy and fertiliser.

All it takes is promotion of small scale solutions not think-big silver bullets that may fail the test of long-term economics.

Lastly, those most affected by long-term cost-benefits will be those under 30, whose voting turnout for local elections has fallen below 40 per cent. Studies have shown these voters are more disposed to sustainable economics and socially just solutions.

Although not compulsory as in some countries, education in civics is getting more attention in New Zealand. Massey university's Design and Democracy has invented programmes to get younger voters interested in politics, and the Electoral Commission has developed Your Voice, Your Choice and the device-friendly KidsVoting for schools.

What a difference these voters could make if they googled the various proponents and issues, then voted on an informed basis for the long-term progress of Hawke's Bay.

Steve Liddle is a former teacher of economics and freelance journalist who in 2014 co-produced free websites in civics for 14 to 18-year-olds **based on the New Zealand curriculum and recently completed one on democracy for the Somali government.