Feature
Down by the river
by Bruce Ansley
The wildly ambitious and hugely disputed Project Aqua has stalled, but feelings are running as high as the costs of building Meridian Energy’s giant canal. Will people power defeat the power company, and is the fight even worth it?
Meridian Energy, the state-owned power company, has converted a town-full of allies into enemies.
This could be its most notable achievement so far in the development of New Zealand’s biggest power project, a $1.2 billion canal diverting water from the Waitaki River into six power stations.
For Project Aqua, as is called, is turning sour on two fronts.
Growing opposition to the hydro project is miring Meridian in a resource- consents nightmare. Worse, the government is promising new laws on how much water it can use.
Meridian has admitted to the Listener that, for all practical purposes, Aqua is on hold.
A testy Keith Turner, Meridian’s chief executive, has even threatened to walk away from the project.
The little Waitaki town of Kurow will be worst affected by Aqua. In a declining village, many townspeople at first saw the project reversing their fortunes. Now they complain that Meridian is full of rhetoric, strong on muscle but short on detail. Whose homes and businesses would be affected? By what? Noise? Dust? Vibration? Where might they be moved to? For how long?
A packed meeting in a local hall last month voted, with only a crackle of dissent, to “totally oppose” the project until Meridian came clean. Meridian was no longer their new neighbour. The company was their foe. How Meridian swung this may form whole new chapters in community-relations manuals.
The rot is spreading: Alan McLay, Mayor of Waitaki district – one of four councils responsible for dealing with Aqua’s resource consents – notes that local politicians simply cannot ignore a hall-full of outrage.
Other groups alarmed by the proposed damage to the river and its valley are determined to stop Aqua altogether. One of them, Waitaki First, is going to court, trying to stall the scheme.
Whatever Meridian Energy’s slant, Aqua is going to blight the lives of locals for years during construction and of future generations who will see the Waitaki reduced to a trickle and replaced by a serpentine monolith running through one of New Zealand’s most scenic valleys. No amount of spin can make it into anything else.
Meridian cites benefits to the local economy (it likes to talk of “opportunities”) and the national interest. Alan Seay, Meridian spokesman, says, “Think back to autumn, the threat of rolling blackouts, huge economic and social disruption. We need more electricity capacity.” The subtext is that the end justifies the means. In the Waitaki Valley, the means has turned nasty.
Kurow, population 400.
Ahead of it, beneath the snowy ranges, lie lakes Aviemore, Benmore, all the canals and powerhouses of all the power schemes that have sucked away at the Waitaki to date.
The lower 60km of the river, where the new canal will run, is much the same as it always was. But not Kurow.
Betty and Skin Russell have been in the district all their lives. Skin, 80, can remember when there were four taxis in town (none at all for the last 30 years), there were rabbiters’ camps in every gully, and Kurow was a-bustle. “If we could get a decent lake out of it, it wouldn’t be so bad,” he says. Meridian is promising to put a small “amenities lake” – hydro lakes have proved popular in southern communities – but Russell echoes a common complaint: “They call it a lake – I call it a duck pond.”
Now the town is hanging on but looks as if it dreads a call from its bank manager.
The mighty Waitaki will be diverted into the canal at Kurow by a series of dams, or what Meridian calls “low-level structures”, literally on their doorsteps.
This is not some gentle rustic waterway meandering through the countryside. The canal will be up to 20m above the ground, as high as a six-storey building and wide enough for ships. The whole thing will be built in two stages, taking six to eight years to finish. Yet many locals were prepared to live with it.
The Kurow Aqua Liaison Committee (KALC) was formed to get the best deal they could out of Meridian, despite misgivings. Waitaki First and a host of other environmental and recreational groups opposed it outright.
The district was not flush enough to spurn the cheques that Meridian was dangling – money, “mitigation”, business. The power company constantly reminded local people that money wasn’t everything. But as far as locals were concerned, it was a good percentage of it.
Many, such as James Kerr, a shearing contractor who is the district’s biggest employer, weren’t opposed at the beginning. “Then I became aware of the destruction of quality farmland, and of the river. It’s in pristine condition.”
Kurow realised it was about to become the newest construction town on the Waitaki, a region whose previous hydro towns still have the shattered look of a hall after the ball. It also began to understand the realities of dealing with a corporate giant determined to get its way.
“We’re the most affected community on the river and we should get a fair say on what happens to the town. If it has to happen, we want to know if we can remain a village,” says Kerr. “Meridian pays us lip service, that’s all. People in the community are fearful of what’s ahead. We’re getting a rough deal. Meridian should be more upfront, more honest.”
You hear the same view everywhere.
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