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Ruataniwha irrigation scheme hits farmer uptake targets

Ruataniwha irrigation scheme hits farmer uptake targets

By Pattrick Smellie

April 27 (BusinessDesk) - Enough Hawke's Bay farmers have signed up for water from the proposed Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme for it to go ahead as long as a cornerstone institutional capital investor can be found to back it, its regional council promoter announced.

Some 196 water users have signed up to take up to 42.8 million cubic metres of water annually from the scheme, which will require a $333 million dam on the Tukituki River to support mainly livestock and arable farming, including horticulture and winegrowers, as well as dairy expansion at a price of 27.5 cents a litre, sufficient to fund the infrastructure for the project..

That total is "in excess of the formal Hawke's Bay Regional Council condition precedent," said Andrew Newman, chief executive of the Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Company, the HBRC's economic development arm.

He told BusinessDesk that a surge in uptake from water users reflected increasing confidence that the scheme would attract institutional capital to sit alongside the $80 million HBRIC is putting into the scheme, which will eventually store up to 93 million cubic metres of water.

He declined to comment on recent speculation that the investment arm of the Accident Compensation Corp, a Crown entity, would back the scheme, which is eligible for funding from the government's $400 million Crown Irrigation Fund, as subordinated debt.

Crown funding is only available with institutional capital backing. The Ruataniwha scheme had previously attracted Tauranga-based Trustpower and the trading arm of South Island iwi, Ngai Tahu, to back it before they abandoned the process two years ago after Infratil-controlled Trustpower determined it would "not be possible to invest within its risk and return framework for a project of this nature."

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A recent report for the promoters suggested that, including on-farm infrastructure that farmers would pay for, the total cost of the scheme had risen by 50 percent to $900 million and that it will contribute 3,500 jobs and $380 million a year to the economic output of Hawke's Bay.

The announcement came on the same day as the two-yearly DairyNZ report on the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord, monitoring dairy farmer compliance with industry standards for managing freshwater resources.

The audited report shows that 96 percent of dairy cattle are fenced off from waterways on farms with 25,656 kilometres of waterways excluded from dairy cattle, while the report found some 5.8 percent of dairy units nationally showed "significant non-compliance for dairy effluent systems", down from 7 percent in 2013-14.

"Seventy-five percent of farmers, compared to 56 percent in 2013-14, are now getting nitrogen information to help them farm more responsibly – with 8598 nutrient budgets processed last year."

More than 99 percent of 42,773 regular stock crossing points on dairy farms now have bridges or culverts to protect local water quality.

However, Forest & Bird said it remained disappointing still to see high levels of non-compliance in Northland and Auckland and cast doubt on the accuracy of figures for the Waikato region.

"In Waikato...only 10 percent of dairy farms were monitored and advance notice is given for those farm inspections," said the environmental lobbyist's Kevin Hackwell. "A quarter of New Zealand’s dairy farms are in Waikato, where the non-compliance rate was recorded at three percent in the latest survey. We suspect the real rate of serious non-compliance in the Waikato is actually a lot higher than the stated figure."

Forest & Bird also has an appeal pending against a High Court decision dismissing its objection to a "land swap" deal required for the Ruataniwha scheme.

(BusinessDesk)

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