Water wars: Triple whammy of dry summer, river restrictions and irrigation plans hit Hawke's Bay

Thursday, 22 November 2018

A chalky white snake of silt plots the path where the river should be.

This is no place for Dave Hern's rod and reel, which sits up like an antenna on the front of his truck.

Hern's been a fishing guide in Central Hawke's Bay since 1986. This stretch of the Waipawa River used to dry up for a couple of weeks a year. This year it was bleached and barren by October 16, and Hern reckons it will probably stay that way until April.

He's not the only one who has noticed the changes. Most of his business comes from repeat clients. The crew arriving next week just emailed: they're not keen on fishing the Waipawa or neighbouring Tukituki rivers. Hern used to put anglers into local motels for about 50 nights a year. This season he hasn't made one booking – everyone wants to go backcountry, where the water is clean and plentiful. 

READ MORE: How does your region use water?

'My clients are just not happy coming to a river system that smells and is covered in weed. Or even where we start off in the parking area, with a sign saying don't bring your dog or there's poisonous algae, the water is not safe to swim in.'

But this is not another story about water pollution. It's a story about the bellyful of cool clean water in the aquifer beneath these plains. The natural underground storage reservoir that feeds these rivers and springs, that slakes the thirst of residents and brings life – and jobs – to the lands above. It's a story about the fight that's brewing over who should lay claim to that, how much of it, and for what use?

Hern is upset about the degradation of the waters he lives by. But he's angrier still that, despite scientists agreeing that the millions of litres being sucked from the aquifer are already bleeding the region's rivers and springs, a new plan could see another 15 million cubic metres dragged every year from the deep. That's an increase of more than 50 per cent.

'I don't have an issue with water users, my issue is definitely with regional council giving consents to take water that is actually not there to be given. That's the big issue. We all need water. What gives them the right to give away my opportunity to fish … or to do anything else?'

The Ruataniwha Basin sits in the rain shadow of the Ruahine Range. Clouds dump on the hills and the rain swells the Tukituki and Waipawa rivers. The aquifer, springs and waterways talk to each other – rain percolates through to the aquifer, which pushes water back to the surface.

This has long been farming country. The 1908 Cyclopedia of New Zealand noted sheep farming, grain cropping and dairy farming were the chief industries at the tiny historic town of Ongaonga. But as with most of the country, the way the land and water is used has changed dramatically with the arrival of industrial-scale irrigation.

The irrigated land area drawing from the area's rivers and aquifer tripled from 2200 hectares in 1995 to about 7000ha in 2009. And the consents to suck water from the ground to grow grass, crops and orchards have soared from three million cubic metres in 1990, to 28.5 million today. For context, that's equivalent to emptying about 11,400 Olympic swimming pools. While crops and pasture each make up about 40 per cent of water use, many of the biggest individual users of aquifer water are dairy farms.

Take the road inland from Waipawa to Tikokino and you'll see centre pivot irrigators stalking the land like daddy long-legs spiders, spitting water against the bright sunshine. Mike Harrison has been a firefighter here for 20 years, and fire chief for 13.  

Three years ago the station had to deepen its bore from 30m to 45m because, when the irrigators started up in summer, the water dropped too low to draw. Far from any piped supply, if the station bore dries up they're forced to pump from the school swimming pool opposite, or beg water from rainwater tanks or dairy farm bores.

'That's just an indication there's too much water being pulled out of the ground … What they have just done is allocated water on the basis that there's an endless supply underground. We are finding out that there actually isn't, that it is finite.'

The climate also seems to be changing, drying out from September instead of December. 'You can see what's coming,' Harrison says, of climate change predictions that Hawke's Bay, like much of the east of the country, will become hotter and drier.

'The water resource is quite precious. We need to make sure we use it wisely, and we're not going to draw too much. There's enough for everybody, if everybody uses it the right way.'

Down the road at Ongaonga, residents have collectively spent $126,795 deepening their bores or installing more powerful pumps to combat falling water levels.

In 2012, five houses ran out of water just after Christmas. They had to go to friends' places to shower, all the while watching the centre pivot sprinkling full-bore at the dairy farm some 200m away. 

Single mum Shona Pye is just back at her Ongaonga home from her job at the freezing works. She still has two boys at home, and had to get a loan against her mortgage last year to pay $6000 for a submersible pump, because the water table had dropped too low. If the water becomes more inaccessible, she will be left high and dry.

'I'm very worried. We're supposed to have a drought this year. If we run out, there's no possible way I'm going to be able to afford to do anything else.'

Bill Stevenson spent $6800 on a new pump. It all went wrong for the 77-year-old around 2004, when industrial-scale irrigation kicked in and the dairy farm down the road kept expanding. Before then, he'd see trout and freshwater crays at the golf club stream.

'I've lived here 34 years. The little stream around the corner used to run 11-11½ months a year. Now the only time it runs is when there's a flood. That used to be a trout breeding stream.'

Which is why he 'saw red' when he heard of plans to take another 15 million cubic metres from the aquifer.

The idea came out of the board of inquiry that considered the Ruataniwha Dam. Hawke's Bay Regional Council's hydrologist modelled the aquifer to better understand what's happening inside the underground tank.

He found extraction was lowering the aquifer levels, and taking the consented amount of 28.5 million cubic metres would continue to reduce groundwater and strip water out of rivers. (Last year, only half the total consented volume was actually used.)

'He did not agree that there should be any increase in the groundwater extracted from this basin,' the board of inquiry noted.

The hydrologists hired by irrigators agreed any increase in groundwater take would affect the creeks and springs that water the land. But they argued the aquifer could easily supply 43.5 million cubic metres – a 53 per cent increase.

In the end, the board decided a 'second tranche' of water could be up for grabs, as long as some was returned to the rivers to prevent them diminishing to a fish-free trickle.

The so-called augmentation water was supposed to come from the dam, but now the dam isn't happening, the plan is to take more water from the aquifer to pump into the rivers to offset the impact of taking water from the aquifer.

Forest and Bird hydrologist Annabeth Cohen says the idea is 'insane'.

'The board of inquiry says groundwater levels have been steadily decreasing, so let's go deeper and take more water. It doesn't make any sense to me.'

Hawke's Bay Regional Council hydrology and hydrogeology principal scientist, Jeff Smith concedes it sounds like twisted logic.

'It's all about timing. You might have a groundwater abstraction that's been going on for three or four months and then the lowland streams start running a bit lower because of that, but it takes time. So what you can do is give them a quick burst of water from the aquifer and pump it in there to get them through that low period. It could be weeks or maybe a month or so of augmentation.

'By the time the low flow period is over and you stop your groundwater pumping, they can recover naturally. It's just a case of managing the timing of the abstractions and the flows in the river. The modelling showed that it can work.'

But that would require such a precise understanding of what's happening in the aquifer that you can predict exactly how water moves through the system, and how long it takes. Even the Environment Ministry notes 'quantifying the timing and extent of connection between groundwater takes and river flow depletion can be difficult'. Given there's such divergence in views that one scientist thinks the aquifer is fully allocated and another thinks increasing the allocation by 50 per cent is fine, how can the public have confidence that scientists really know what's going on? It's a fair question, says HBRC integrated catchment manager Iain Maxwell.

'Science is always going to be imperfect. We are dealing with a system we can't see, so we have to model it, it's underground. The reality is it's our only method of being able to have informed decisions or discussions around what to do here. It is as good as we can get it.'

Alistair Setter, for one, doesn't believe the science. Take the main road out of Ongaonga, past the deer farm and the Mr Apple orchard and the ankle-deep green sheen of Plantation Road Dairy, and you'll get to Setter's place. 

He grows peas and beer barley and has a consent to take about 20,000 cubic metres of river water to irrigate his farm. When the river runs low, his consent restrictions require him to stop irrigating. At the moment, that's only about one year in three, and normally so late in the summer it has little impact as he's just drying off the barley. Meanwhile, deep-bore irrigators can continue through the dry period, because the scientists reckon even if you stopped dragging a deep bore it wouldn't affect the river flow quickly enough to prevent it drying out. He questions whether water should go to grow low-value grass, at the cost of high-value, high-employment industries such as orchards.

'For me, that's taking my water, right? You're bloody giving it to someone else.

'The surface-take people like myself, we have to stop when we start impacting the environment. But the deep-water aquifer people, they can keep pumping right through January, February – right through the very driest time. They have no caps put on them, at all. They say, 'Oh there's a timing difference, ra ra.' The bottom line is they're taking water that would get to the river and it's impacting the rivers and the streams and the wetlands and residents and everyone else, but they can still bloody do it.

'Things are on a bad trend now. They're getting worse year in, year out. It's just unbelievable that they could think they could increase the aquifer take by 53 per cent.'

Further down the plains, in Waipawa, John Rata is also brassed off. The Te Whatuiāpiti kaumatua's marae sits above the Tukituki River. He hasn't been game enough to set an eel net in there for about 25 years - because of the state of the depleted river.

'I took my great grandson down there just to have a little toddle around. He picked up a little stick out of the river and put it in his mouth. He bloody near died that night. It must have been water borne disease or something.'

Rata reckons the regional council should listen to their own expert, and not hand out any more water consents.

'To me they are disregarding their own science. That's disappointing coming from a body that is supposed to be setting the goalposts around water quantity and quality.'

But Maxwell says the board of inquiry locked the council into a legal process. While it can still decline 'tranche 2' applications, it had to offer them.

Community anger towards the tranche-2 idea is causing jitters – the council is surveying Ongaonga and Tikokino residents about their water issues, a community taskforce has been convened to discuss options, and a public meeting next week will gauge the mood. The consents are on hold, while the applicants investigate whether augmentation is even possible.

Stuff tried to contact four of the eight tranche-2 applicants, who have applied for 17 million cubic metres (only 15 million is available).

Fruit and vege grower John Bostock has applied for 1.6 million cubic metres. He would not be interviewed, but provided a statement saying 'any water taken must enhance the environment' and the company was happy to develop a collaborative approach with the community.

Te Awahohonu Forest Trust wants 4.9 million cubic metres, to irrigate 540ha of pasture and crops. A representative thought it was a 'private matter'. 

Plantation Road Dairy, which already has a water consent to take 1.9 million cubic metres, is applying for another 6.1 million cubic metres. There's a drilling rig out in one paddock, fuelling community concern the consents are a done deal. Maxwell says it's not odd to drill a bore before getting consent, to check if water is accessible. 

In July, new restrictions began for river water users, increasing the minimum flow levels at which irrigation bans kick in. The change, known as plan change 6, aims to improve water quality, reduce algae growth and protect fishlife. 

That's good for the river, but not for farmers. For irrigators taking surface water, the changes will increase the number of days irrigation is banned. The plan prompted dire predictions. Bostock said he would have to remove an entire orchard as it would become uneconomic – he lost $200,000 in 2012, when a 65-day low-flow irrigation ban produced stunted apples.

Orchard company Mr Apple predicted severe water shortages could wipe out its $32m export crop.

Plantation Road Dairy boss Kevin Davidson wouldn't talk, except to say the new low-flow limits would hurt the region.

'We will have water cut off on average 30 to 40 days a year at a critical time. Worst case up to 120 days and that will cost approx 1000 jobs to the bay.'

After a dry year saw his irrigation shut off for three months a few years back, dairy farmer Paul Franklin put in a dam. Despite costing 'north of half a million', it's worked for him, but he had a natural basin to fill. However, it only gives him two months of irrigation, and it's so dry already he reckons the taps will be shut off by the end of November.

He's applying for another 1m cubic metres of tranche-2 water, to irrigate his dairy support block, to rear calves and grow fodder for his 4500 cows. He's still investigating how the augmentation might work and, if there is going to be an adverse effect, he'll probably pull out.

'We're still trying to do the science … For people to object before we know what is going on is a little bit premature.'

Alistair Setter reckons we need a better system to allocate water, which takes into account the value of what it's being used for. And putting a price on it could help.

'The central issue is, what the heck are we doing with our water? It's clearly a scarce resource and yet here we are giving it to first in, first served, in huge volumes.'

Maxwell says that's a conversation for New Zealand Inc. When he started in water management 25 years ago, communities weren't interested. Now they are. But he doesn't think there's a kumbaya solution to please everyone.

'What is the best way to manage these resources? Is it first in the queue gets what they want, and last in the queue gets nothing? Does somebody have to pick a winner, to say, we think growing peas is better than growing maize? Or growing apples is better than growing peaches? Who makes those decisions? How do they make those decisions? They are challenging and complicated questions for regional councils and communities to have to make. There's no silver bullet in all this.'

Forest & Bird's Annabeth Cohen says moving water around, such as by augmentation schemes, is just moving the deckchairs on the Titanic.

'Building a dam or augmentation or managed aquifer recharge might buy us a bit of time, but we're really kidding ourselves, if we think we can engineer our way out of this one. We've got to be more resilient in the face of climate change – and that means a type of farming that accepts the limits that exist now.'

Peter Kittow agrees. His family has farmed for 100 years on his property beyond Waipawa. What a privilege, he says. But last year the stream at his brother's dried up for the first time since the big dry when he was a boy, in 1947.

Giving so much water to so few is just not fair, and irrigating for milk seems 'bloody ridiculous', he says.

'They talk about pushing boundaries, but where does the rubber band stop? Land will do so much, for how much? I honestly think we're probably asking it to do too much, unnaturally.'

Back at Ongaonga, Bill Stevenson surveys his sun-toasted lawn and quotes his late father-in-law.

'He said to me, you know how all these countries are going round fighting over oil at the moment? He said, 'Not in my lifetime – maybe not in yours – but it could well be in your grandchildren's, they'll be fighting over water'. And I think he's right. So we're fighting over water here.'