HBRC draft Water Assessment Report – are the public being manipulated to panic about shortages

Paul Bailey - ex HB Regional Councillor and Wise Water Use advocate

Photo Credit: Warren Buckland (Photographer, HB Today)

I have been reluctant to comment on the various articles and opinion pieces published in HB Today which have been based on HBRC's draft Hawke's Bay Regional Water Assessment report because, as I write this letter, it has yet to be made publicly available. This is unfortunate and reminds me of the tactics used by Andrew Newman (ex-Regional Council CEO) to sway public opinion.

I have, however, been able to obtain confirmation that the supposed shortfall in water availability is based on an assumption of growth in water usage from 162 million m3 today, to 206 million m3 by 2060. That's an increase in water use of 27% in 40 years.

This raises the very important question of, “have we reached a limit to growth?”

Growth is predicated on the premise of unlimited resources.

In Hawke's Bay we have reached the point where we don't have enough water to continue along the same path we have enjoyed over the last 150 years or so.

This should be ringing alarm bells with the leaders of our community. We simply cannot maintain the status quo. Something has to change.

The solutions proposed at present are all based around water storage of some form or another. Fair enough. But what happens in the future when the water that we store today isn't going to be enough?

Wouldn't it be better to have the conversation now about getting the most value out of the water we are using now, rather than building engineered solutions and kicking the can down the road for future generations to deal with?

I hope that we can have adult conversations around these issues and a great start would be for HBRC to release the draft water assessment report without delay so that we, the public, can start to get our heads around the assumptions made in the report.

The devil is always in the details.

It is beginning to look as if HBRC has a predetermined view on what the solutions are, and are quite willing to manipulate public opinion to this end.

Paul Bailey

Wise Water Use advocate