Gren Christie of Wise Water Use laments environmental destruction of Ruahine forest park for dam

Published as Letter to Editor in HB Today (25/3/2022)

(Written version below print edition)

Having gone through the Ruataniwha Dam debate and battle from start to finish,

I found Mike Petersen’s Talking Point very much a “Back to the Future “ moment. All the same sort of win/win spin we had the first time round with the same end goals.

This will leave in place the unsustainable way water is misused now by big intensive dairy which can cause water insecurity for everybody else. Building a Dam will not change this practice, just cement it in place.

All his talk about environment and climate change to me feels like “we come in peace, shoot to kill”. 48% greenhouse gases come from behind the farm gate.

The biggest emitters again are intensive dairy.

The dam and it’s footprint will add to climate change. I also know of no freshwater scientists that say dams are good for rivers.

The dam will commit environmental vandalism by killing ancient trees - this cannot be mitigated against. These are taonga which ancestors of people living in CHB today may have rested under or brushed against before Captain Cook saw Aotearoa, or any Europeans set foot in Te Matau-a- Maui [HB].

Every death of one of these trees to make way for the dam’s flood zone severs a living connection to the past and threatens the biodiversity of the present.

Something else Mr Petersen fails to mention about the revisited scheme is that the project will be at HB ratepayers’ and taxpayers’ expense. Outside of the totally unpredictable dam building cost is the idea that the general public should pay for 20 million cubic metres of our water per annum to maintain minimum flows. Meanwhile some irrigators can keep sucking water out of our aquifers and rivers for free. These big irrigators are the prime cause in most years for low river volumes.

The cheapest and best way to have water security is to have water allocation reform.

That involves advocacy and commitment, not zillions of our dollars and environmental destruction.

Gren Christie

Member of the original Ruataniwha Water Storage Stakeholders Group, advocate for Wise Water Use