Energy
MOKIHINUI UPDATE: Time for Meridian to withdraw its application?
By Jenny Baker
Meridian Energy received resource consent for the Mokihinui dam in April 2010 when the hearings committee found the issues difficult and the commissioners were split 2:1.
The Department of Conservation is opposing the resource consents, joined by Forest & Bird and
others. The Appeal is expected to be heard in 2012.
Meridian plans to build an 85 metre high dam on the West Coast’s largest river. More than 330 hectares of river gorge and forest will disappear under a 14 kilometre long artificial lake.
“This will be the greatest inundation of conservation land for a hydro scheme that New Zealand has ever seen. It is a tragedy for the native blue ducks, giant land snails, long fin eels and other creatures that live in or beside the Mokihinui. They will be wiped out by Meridian Energy’s massive hydro dam flooding their homes.” says Debs Martin, Forest & Bird Top of the South Field Officer.
Meridian will also need the approval of the Minister of Conservation, Hon. Kate Wilkinson to build the dam because the river is on public conservation land. Meridian has offered to swap other land for that needed for the Mokihinui project. This land would need to be of equivalent (or greater) ecological value and the Department of Conservation has indicated that it would decline such an offer due to the irreplaceable value of the river.
Documents obtained under the Official Information Act have revealed that DOC was intending to turn down Meridian and believed “the public conservation land within the Mokihinui River has such high value that it is most unlikely to be suitable for exchange at all.”
Earlier this month Forest & Bird launched a campaign to give New Zealanders the chance to urge Meridian Energy to withdraw its proposal. Forest & Bird is asking New Zealanders to send a Forest & Bird e-card to publically-owned Meridian asking the company to live up to its stated environmentally-friendly ideals by leaving the Mokihinui intact.
Despite Meridian being a recent sponsor of Project Crimson, the Mokihinui project would drown the very rata forests it pledged to protect.
“We are asking Meridian to do the right thing and enhance its reputation as a generator of renewable energy by leaving this non- renewable river in its wild state,” Forest & Bird General Manager Mike Britton said.
Although water may be renewable under certain conditions a wild river is definitely not.
The argument of proponents for the project is that the Mokihinui project is required to provide a growing demand for power on the West Coast. Such a demand, perceived or real, could be very adequately satisfied by newly approved and more environmentally-friendly hydro projects. Solid Energy withdrew its appeal in October 2010 to Hydro Developments Limited’s Stockton scheme. This project aims to generate power using polluted water from the acid drainage of the Stockton coal mining area and will actually enhance the water quality of the Ngakawau River.
Together with Westpower’s Amethyst scheme (south of Hokitika) and Trust Power’s Arnold scheme (near Greymouth) this would provide three consented and largely unopposed energy projects located in already-modified landscapes, unlike Meridian’s competing proposal in a pristine wilderness.
Forest & Bird’s conservation advocate, Quentin Duthie says,
“West Coast peak demand is 90MW at present, and is projected to grow to 111MW by 2020. The West Coast annual consumption is 317GWh (year of March 2009).
With a potential new supply of 46MW (190-220GWh) from the Arnold Scheme, 8MW (35GWh) from The Amethyst Scheme and 25MW (240GWh) from the Stockton, the West Coast would all but meet peak demand and exceed annual consumption to 2020. This means that the West Coast would export more power than it would import, without needing to dam the Mokihinui.
Destructive dams are old technology and are no longer acceptable on our irreplaceable wild rivers.”
Together with efficiency, conservation and co-generation initiatives to reduce demand we could look to a 21st century solution: localized, small-scale and genuinely renewable.
What you can do:
Write to Meridian Chief Executive Tim Lusk and Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson and ask them to stop the dam going ahead.
Write to newspapers, and MPs about the Mokihinui.
Send an e-card from the Forest & Bird website
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