However, Local Government New Zealand said it is possible for an incoming council to change a decision made by a former council - but this depended on the significance of the decision, and how far implementation of it had progressed.
Regional councillor Tom Belford has said Mr Wilson is "dam wrong" about whether a new council could intervene, reminding him that "elections do matter".
Last week a LGNZ spokeswoman said, that in the case of a major or significant decision a council will almost certainly need to amend its long term plan (LTP) and consult with the community.
"The next LTP is scheduled for June 2018 but a council can go through an LTP amendment, often concurrently with the next annual plan."
Before considering any such amendment, the council would need to think about the total costs of any change as it could be costly - if the council decided to change its LTP, any proposal would need to be accompanied with a full cost and benefit analysis.
"These will need to include the expected costs of stopping a project that was already in the process of being implemented, including the costs of exiting whatever contractual arrangements might have previously been entered into," she said.
Mr Wilson said the point he was making was that it would not be simple for a new council to intervene in the process, due to the amount of work done to get to this stage.
For the new council to "try and unwrap, or unravel, or explore ways of changing or reversing the process" would be a huge task, he said.
This could include repeating all public consultation conducted by council up to this stage, and examining any contracts which had been signed.
"It's not just one decision, it's in excess of 40 to 50-odd. The whole lot would have to be examined. It'd be a huge, huge body of work," he said.
However, unless evidence can be found of alternative means to obtain required land for the dam - the scheme passed to a new council could also be impaired.
As part of the audit for council's annual report, Audit NZ audit director Stephen Lucy discussed with the Finance, Audit, and Risk sub-committee if there should be any impairment of the scheme's development expenditure of more than $15 million - which has been accounted for as an intangible asset.
Since the Court of Appeal upheld an appeal from Forest & Bird last month that a land swap - which would allow the scheme to go ahead - was unlawful, a number of disclosures had been included in HBRIC's financial statements.
Last week Mr Lucy said HBRIC directors were currently looking at alternative means of acquiring access to the land.
"Although this was a live issue I haven't been able to see sufficient audit evidence to satisfy myself that the decision not to impair is the right one.
"So I'll be working with HBRIC directors . . . to obtain sufficient evidence."
Mr Lucy said the worst case scenario would be if the scheme was written off.
"Obviously that's got quite a dramatic effect on HBRIC's own parent accounts and also on council accounts."
After the meeting, Mr Wilson said he had no concerns the asset would be impaired.
"Obviously the DOC land swap is important in the continuation otherwise of the scheme, but HBRIC are working through discussions at the moment about what that might look like," he said.
"My view is it's still looking pretty solid."
HBRIC and DOC have until September 28 to determine whether to seek leave to appeal the Court of Appeal judgement to the Supreme Court.
