Can’t see this Waimea Dam proceeding.
This is the last dam project still going with state funding support, since it was underway when the government changed last year. Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd has lent it over $22m via Tasman District Council. They are also offering the dam company a $10 million interest free loan, and a $7 million grant. The dam company have raised $16.5 million. That’s $55.5 million ready to go.
But new cost estimates have come in at up to $75.9 million, and they haven’t turned a spade on it yet.
It also needs the Department of Conservation to sell it nearly 10 hectares of land. Shades of Ruataniwha – pretty hard to see the Crown wanting to get pantsed again in the Supreme Court by Forest and Bird.
It also needs a local bill to go through Parliament for that land sale to occur. While it’s rare for a local bill to be opposed by Parliament, the Greens oppose it and it’s pretty hard to see Labour supporting it.
And it needs Tasman District Council to vote for it again on August 28th. I don’t yet see a majority for that vote.
Mayor Kempthorne said that security of water supply was a global issue as well as a very real local issue: “If we go into having no dam, then the constraints on water in Richmond, Mapua, Brightwater, Redwood Valley, Hope in the dry summer months will be very extreme. I am certain that if the dam does not proceed then it or another equivalent solution will be back on the table again at some point, that it will be more expensive and that we will have suffered significant economic, environmental and social costs in the meantime.”
The rain in Tasman really does fall mainly on the plain, but it arrives in great big bursts. Richmond for example has just had its mainstreet rebuilt top to bottom to cope with massive downpours and king tides. Followed by drought.
Somehow this burgeoning population and water-hungry horticultural-based economy needs secure water supplies.
National MP Nick Smith had 9 years and all the funding and political capital in the world to get this thing going.
But this dog won’t hunt.
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