HBRIC Ltd Response to Board of Inquiry draft decision

HBRIC welcomes the Board of Inquiry’s draft decision indicating its intention to grant what we believe are useable production land use consent conditions for the RWSS after the High Court referral back to it.

This is a major positive milestone decision for the scheme.

We note that the Board of Inquiry has clearly worked very hard to ensure the decision is robust and defensible and enables the scheme to deliver on both the economic and environmental benefits for the Tukituki catchment and Hawke’s Bay as a whole. HBRIC is also pleased that the Board has recognised the need to frame revised conditions in a way that it and the farmers taking water from the Scheme will be able to comply with.

There are some points we believe would benefit from clarification and HBRIC will be taking up the opportunity it has to make comments which assist the Board of Inquiry to finalise its decision.

While the decision is in draft form at this point, it gives us real confidence that we can continue to move ahead with all other workstreams, including water contracting and capital raising.

In particular, right now as our farming community emerges from yet another extremely dry summer, this decision will enable those farmers choosing to access RWSS water to start actively planning for life within a modern, large-scale, high-reliability irrigation scheme.

We are very excited about the prospect of building infrastructure which will make a material and positive difference to Hawke’s Bay’s economic resilience over many decades to come and in a world where climate change is predicated to bring more and more severe droughts.

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