Meridian wins West Coast hydro resource consent

Tuesday 6th April 2010

Meridian Energy has won the first round in a hard-fought battle for resource consents to build a new hydro-electricity project of between 65 and 85 Megawatts on the Mokihinui River on the South Island's West Coast.

The split decision, 2 to 1, has dismayed the Green Party and is likely to be appealed to the Environment Court, but Meridian chief executive Tim Lusk welcomed the outcome which he said had "the overwhelming support of West Coasters" because of its capacity to improve security of supply in the remote region.

Meridian has had a string of resource consent application failures, most recently in its attempt to gain consent for a massive windfarm, Project Hayes, in the Maniototo region of the lower South Island. The state-owned enterprise had been deeply concerned the Mokihinui application would also fail as tests under the Resource Management Act appeared to be placing ever greater hurdles in the way of renewable electricity developments.

The Green Party's West Coast MP and conservation spokesman Kevin Hague described the decision as "disastrous"for "one of the most environmentally significant and biodiverse rivers in the country".

Meridian still needed concessions from the Department of Conservation to allow felling of "tall rare forest, reduce habitat, and most likely kill threatened species such as whio, kiwi and long-finned eel."

Hague urged the Conservation Minister, Kate Wilkinson, to refuse the concessions and make up some of the ground lost by the government's willingness to consider mining on DoC protected lands, especially as an alternative scheme using water from the Stockton Plateau had already been granted.

This removed the argument that the Mokihinui Dam was important for security of supply to the West Coast. The Hydro Developments Ltd. dam proposal is being appealed by the state-owned coal miner, Solid Energy Ltd., which believes its Stockton mine operations could be compromised by the HDL scheme.

Lusk said Meridian accepted that "there will be some environmental impact from the project" and had gone to great lengths to mitigate those effects so that benefits outweighed negatives.

"The decision contains a large number of conditions aimed at ensuring that environmental effects are kept to a minimum," Lusk said.

Businesswire.co.nz

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