In response, the pair say the regional council has offered residents access to long-term, low-interest loans — repayable through their regional rates — to install rainwater tanks under the council's Sustainable Homes initiative.
In its Long Term Plan this year, the regional council consulted on borrowing $13 million over the next 10 years to provide financial assistance to help 1300 homes in Hawke's Bay to become more sustainable. However, details of the Sustainable Homes policy are yet to be finalised and are not due to go before council for approval until September.
Regardless, Bill Stevenson said he and other residents were "not interested" in the offer of a loan.
"It's just another charge against us ratepayers out here for the rape of the aquifer, which is what has caused all the problems," he said.
He said those problems started back in 2004 with the commencement of large-scale irrigation near the two townships, and came to a head in 2012 when five homes at Ongaonga ran out of drinking water because of falling bore levels.
Last February, Tikokino's volunteer rural fire brigade was reduced to relying on water from the pool at the local school to fight fires, after the station's bore pump failed.
At the time the brigade's chief fire officer, Mike Harrison, blamed the pump's failure on it being overworked due to dropping levels of underground water, and Stevenson himself spent $6800 installing a new submersible pump for his bore last year.
He said the previous owner of his home at Ongaonga lived there for more than 30 years and measured the level of the bore every Friday. It had never been less than 2.1m from the surface.
"Last year it was seven-and-a-half metres from the surface and our pump couldn't handle it," Stevenson said.
Hobbs-Turner was more diplomatic and said she was "heartened" by the sympathy shown around the regional council table. But she said the offer of rainwater tanks – which could cost as much as $20,000 before filtration systems were considered — would not be feasible for the many elderly ratepayers in the townships.
"It's a band-aid solution and doesn't solve the long-term problems. Sympathy does not fill our water jugs," she said.
She was grateful for the support shown by National's Tukituki MP, Lawrence Yule, who wrote to regional council chairman Rex Graham and others last month after earlier meeting with residents.
Yule wrote that he supported the residents' concerns about further groundwater extraction on bore levels and formally requested that the council undertake a "TANK-like" scientific review of the Ruataniwha Basin, similar to what it had done for the Tutaekuri, Ahuriri, Ngāruroro and Karamū (TANK) catchments.
Bill Stevenson said a scientific study to establish the health of the aquifer and the impact of groundwater consents was needed "unquestionably".
"[The regional council] needs to respect the fact they are responsible for water and that people in [Onga and Tiko] have first right to water [over irrigators]. We need to have drinkable water."
Rex Graham said his council was "very sympathetic" to the plight of the residents and wanted to find a solution.
"It's not right or fair that residents in any of these small towns are being so adversely affected by the increased and changing commercial activity that surrounds them. We need to find solutions that allow industry to flourish without adversely impacting on any of its neighbours."
He said council staff had been instructed to visit "short-term" remedies to deal with the immediate problem, but he personally did not favour a TANK-like process as it could prove to be "expensive, long and cumbersome".
"I would rather prefer getting a bunch of smart engineering-types in a room, to devise practical solutions to sort this out," he said.
