The rest is history.
The only issue in doubt is where the original infection came from. Early indications are that campylobacter came from sheep being farmed organically nearby. How ironic is that?
It wasn't the dirty dairy farms 40 kilometres upriver. It could have been the clean green sheep right next door.
The wider question is why delay publishing this information?
I believe the evidence indicates that Hastings District Council has been negligent.
Maintenance of essential infrastructure is the core function of council.
HB Regional Council resource consent conditions specifying safe and responsible stewardship of the aquifer were breached in spectacular fashion. I believe that using current legislation, HB Regional Council should prosecute HDC.
The government should be asking why HB Regional Council failed to police and enforce its own rules and why Hastings failed to maintain basic infrastructure and obey consent conditions. (Remember how we didn't need amalgamation because all the councils work so well together? Oops.)
Why didn't HBRC do its job properly and tell Hastings that the bore was a potential disaster? Why couldn't Hastings identify and fix a long-standing problem? They knew there was an issue. That's why they installed a pump and a sump.
With elections looming, the government knows that water quality is a major issue nationally. Will PM John Key give both councils a good clip round the ears and tell every other authority in New Zealand to safely maintain their water supplies or risk being tied to a TV set by Steven Joyce and forced to watch The Real Housewives of Auckland on an endless loop forever? Not likely.
No one is facing up to their responsibilities. All the guilty parties are sprinting for cover.
The soft option, and the path chosen, is to set up an inquiry. When the heat has died down, a report will be issued at midnight on New Year's Eve confirming what we already know.
It will say that all parties will cooperate in future to ensure that this never happens again, guidelines will be issued, an agency will be set up and blah blah blah.
This is standard practice used worldwide to protect the guilty and bamboozle the public.
That's how you get away with it. No public official or politician need fear that negligence or neglect may get you fined, sacked or jailed. Kick it down the road and change the subject.
The powers that be are dealing themselves a get out of jail card and keeping a few more up their sleeves for future reference.
The water crisis has cost millions already and will cost a lot more. That's another lesson we should remember.
Transparency and truth from the start is infinitely preferable to a whitewash or a yellow card delivered in the distant future at great expense.
As we tut-tut over the terrible Trump, we might like to ask ourselves and our leaders if we are really as clean and green and 100% pure as we like to think we are. To the engaged observer, that would be an interesting debate.
• Tim Gilbertson is a former mayor of Central Hawke's Bay and a former Hawke's Bay regional councillor. His column will appear every fortnight on a Saturday. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
