Talking point: There's a simple solution to water security

One of the key challenges facing our region is how to enhance and use water resources for the mutual benefit of the environment and the economy. Photo / Warren Buckland

OPINION:

As highlighted in the recent Hawke's Bay Regional Council report, one of the key challenges facing Heretaunga (Hastings, Napier and the Heretaunga plains) is how we enhance and use our water resources for the mutual benefit of the environment and our economy.

In the face of imminent climate change we are blessed with a simple and affordable solution unlike most of our neighbours in NZ and the rest of the world. We can affordably store water in the winter when it is abundance and release it in to our environment in the summer.

In the past, the economy has taken preference to this unique resource at the cost of the environment and this is not acceptable or sustainable going forward.

We need to fix the environmental challenges while we continue to support our growers and our industry who underpin the jobs and the wealth of our region.

We are in the very fortunate position of being able to do both with relatively low capital cost, this is a win/ win opportunity. We have a raft of commercial water users, some for short periods over the summer period and others for the whole year.

The challenge is that we have very strong demand for irrigation water over the summer and this affects the water table and often results in the water levels in our streams and waterways dropping, some drying up entirely.

This has a negative effect on our wildlife habitat, especially tuna. We need a water plan that enables our economy to grow while protecting and enhancing our environment.

The current proposal is to allow water users to take water from the aquifer, albeit it at a reduced level (refer TANK) and to establish two environmental water storage schemes.

One at the Glazebrook site and eventually the other at the WhanaWhana site. These schemes will create approximately 25Mcu of water storage and be predominantly for environmental use with only small direct commercial application. i.e., we store the water in the winter from high river overflows and release it into the Ngaruroro and the Karewarewa/Paritua stream respectively.

The water released into the Paritua, will pass through Bridge Pa and Paki Paki on its way to the Karamu, maintaining the stream's water level in the summer during high irrigation use.

The use of augmentation such as is currently used on the Raupare, which was a brilliant initiative by the local growers should be continued and extended to other streams not directly on the Karamu.

Our commercial water users need to take all their water from the aquifer, all stream and river takes need to be fazed out.

The community should put up the capital and invite other interested investors such as Tangata Whenua to invest.

The annual operational costs and return on capital should be funded by the commercial water users through an environmental rate. This will be a relatively small cost when put across all commercial water users.

We should exclude ordinary householders and health providers from the environmental rate.

This is an easy and obvious solution to manage our water resource for our economy and our environment over the next very challenging decades.

We all know that climate change is here, it is already devastating many regions of our world and we will not be exempt.

If we don't prepare now we will just sleep walk into an economic and environmental disaster with tremendous negative consequences to our region and to the health of our people.

Rex Graham is the former chair of the regional council