Need for water storage

Central Hawke's Bay farmer Hugh Ritchie came home from a few days touring around Canterbury absolutely certain that Hawke's Bay needs to store water. Hardly anyone in the Bay has a dam of a serious size, but Hugh is hoping that will all change writes Country-wide. The trip was organised by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council, and took councillors, farmers and people interested in water-like Fish and Game-to look at water storage options in Canterbury. As well as addressing water storage, Hugh says it is clear Hawke's Bay also needs a wider strategy for water. Increasingly water is coming under pressure at times during the year, and water availability will be critical.  "We learnt that Canterbury uses only 7% of its water. If they irrigated all of Canterbury, every single bit of it, they would use 12%." He says everybody believes NZ is short of water, but in Australia they really are short but they use every little bit well. Hugh says there has to be compromises made between building dams and keeping low flows in rivers.  The trip visited the Opuha dam, where MAF calculated for every $1 extra generated on farm, $8.50 is generated downstream. Investing in the Opuha dam has benefitted the whole community, not just the farmers who use the irrigation water from it. Hugh is also worried about the potential impact of the Emissions Trading Scheme on Farming. "The fundamental problem with ETS is we have a world-wide problem. If you try to solve it on individual country basis you don't get efficiencies." He is also concerned about the low number of tertiary graduates entering agriculture. Last year only 130 students graduated from tertiary level study, in comparison with 2500 performing arts students coming out each year.