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The controversial yet to be publicly released RWA report
The HB Regional Council has produced a report on the state of play of the region’s freshwater resources. The ‘Regional Water Assessment’ report (RWA) looks at:
How much water the region has;
How that water is being used; and
Potential future water needs.
The Regional Council is to be commended for its initiative in commissioning this report – after all, how can we manage our precious freshwater water resource unless we know how much water we have and how it’s being used?
However, the RWA was only selectively released to some stakeholder groups in December 2022, and its full public release has been delayed apparently due to the commissioning of an additional section to address the implications of February’s Cyclone Gabrielle.
This delay in the full release of this publicly funded report – it’s cost was met from a pool of $17.4m from Provincial Growth Fund and Regional Council monies – it unjustifiable in Wise Water Use’s view. This is because some parties privy to the report, like CHB’s mayor and long-term Ruataniwha dam promoter, Alex Walker, have already released extracts of the RWA to support their own ideas about local water management.
It is understandable that promoters of the dam may want to manipulate the public into panicking about future water shortages, and pending economic Armageddon if we don’t increase supply. It is equally understandable that they might want to ignore scenarios which show that with improvements to the ways we use our water – demand management – we can achieve water surpluses.
Wise Water Use’s Gren Christie asks why the Regional Council’s own website only announces 2 of 3 possible water scenarios explored in the RWA in his letter to the editor here, published in the HB Today on 19 May 2023. Christie suggests that the glaring omission of scenario 3 – which projects that water surpluses are achievable from improved demand management – opens the Council up to accusations of cherry picking the information it wants the public to know.
Similarly, a report which recently appeared in HB Today (reproduced below) while balanced in its content, clearly couldn’t resist the front-page headline-grabbing announcement focusing on immanent water shortages.
Wise Water Use believe that the full report should be released immediately to ensure that the wider public can engage in transparent, informed and balanced debate about management of the region’s freshwater resources.
We believe that current water demand should be investigated before ratepayer funded engineering projects like Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) and mega-dams are considered. First cab of the rank needs to a review and reallocation of large water consents, as argued here by Wise Water Use’s Paul Bailey.
In CHB 10 mostly intensive dairy farms hold consents to take 60% of all allocated water – just one of these farms holds consents greater than the volume of water for the town of Waipukurau!
This is both economically unfair to other farmers and the community, and environmentally unsustainable due to the pollution these farms produce.
Te mana o te wai before security of supply!
(Trevor Le Lievre, Spokesperson, Wise Water Use)
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