Tukituki plan change: Hawke's Bay Regional Council 'dances on grave of difficult decision'

A meeting of the Regional Council got heated a week after a councillor walked out of a meeting. Photo / File

A meeting of Hawke's Bay Regional Council got heated, just a week after a councillor walked out of one.

The council's Regional Planning Committee was unable to make a decision on whether to delay the implementation of the Tukituki Plan change after Fenton Wilson walked out, meaning the committee did not have a quorum.

At a full council meeting Wednesday, councillor Tom Belford moved a notice of motion which would prevent council spending any more on investigating the Plan Change unless authorised by council in the future.

The plan change, called Plan Change Six, would change minimum flow rates in the Tukituki river, meaning water restrictions would be brought in earlier.

The motion passed, with councillors Debbie Hewitt, Alan Dick and Fenton Wilson all voting against it.

Hewitt, who represents Central Hawke's Bay, described the motion as "dancing on the grave" of a challenging discussion.

She said the Tukituki taskforce had less time to work with the community than the TANK project, which looks after freshwater on the Heretaunga Plains.

"In the TANK catchment you guys have had about six years to be talking about that, well we've had three meetings and we are trying very hard to get to a state where we're in agreement around the table.

"All the way through this what I have asked is to give us the time to get back as a community together, to have a discussion."

She said experts from outside the Tukituki catchment and the Central Hawke's Bay community are trying to dictate how water should be managed in the district.

"The future of the water management of Central Hawke's Bay belongs to the people of Central Hawke's Bay."

Dick said voting for the motion would make the council look anti-farming.

He said voting for the motion marginalised the Central Hawke's Bay community.

Councillor Peter Beaven, however, said all he was hearing from those opposed was simply "political grand-standing".

"More time is a luxury we simply don't have here."

Belford said the motion did not prevent further community discussion, or further investigations into water management in Central Hawke's Bay, externally from Hawke's Bay Regional Council.

HBRC CEO James Palmer said there was no further expenditure planned for investigations into the plan change.

"There is no ongoing expenditure at the moment, this work is on hold."

Hewitt, Dick and Wilson all asked whether the motion went against the Regional Planning Committee Act, with Palmer saying it probably went against the "spirit of the act" but whether it went against the letter of the law was another question.