Source: Radio New Zealand
The Morgan Gorge. Neil Silverwood
Conservation and outdoor recreation groups say the fight to save a pristine back country river is not over as they consider legal action and warn of seismic risk.
The controversial Waitaha hydro scheme received Fast Track Approval on Friday, becoming the 18th fast track project to be approved since the system began in February last year.
The $200 million scheme, located on the remote Waitaha River on conservation land between Hokitika and Franz Josef Glacier, will divert water through a tunnel generating 23 megawatts of hydroelectric power, enough to power the equivalent of about 12,000 homes, according to Westpower.
But a cluster of conservation and outdoor recreation groups say they are considering legal action, while an engineering geologist and health and safety specialist have written to Westpower’s board, warning it of the risk from the massive fault line just kilometres away.
Westpower first applied for concessions for the scheme in 2014, but investigations began even earlier, in 2004.
Former environment minister David Parker declined the application in 2019, vetoing it under the Conservation Act on the basis of the natural character and intrinsic value of the near-pristine area and people’s experience of it.
Former environment minister David Parker. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
At the time the National Party vowed to “get the Waitaha power scheme on” if re-elected.
Westpower applied to have the minister’s decision reconsidered in 2022, a process it suspended when it obtained a spot in the Fast Track Approvals Act as one of 149 priority projects.
The project had the longstanding support of local rūnanga, Ngāti Makaawhio and Ngāti Waewae.
Known collectively as Poutini Ngāi Tahu, the rūnanga wrote to the government in 2024 urging the project’s fast-tracking, and entered into a partnership agreement with Westpower.
Federated Mountain Club (FMC) president Megan Dimozantos said the group was “gutted” by the approval.
The potential benefits of the project did not stack up, she said.
Federated Mountain Club president Megan Dimozantos. Supplied / FMC
“It’s not even a big scheme – if you look at something like what Mercury recently built up near Taupō, the geothermal scheme up there, that’s a quarter of a billion dollars and that’s going to service 158,000 households once it’s at full capacity.
“The Waitaha scheme is going to cost nearly the same to build and it’s only going to service 12,000 households.”
The organisation supported renewable energy, but “it needs to be built in the right place”, Dimozantos said.
“And the Waitaha at the top of Morgan Gorge is not the right place – it’s not an appropriate place for a hydro scheme.
“We’re considering our options at the moment. We’ve got the decision with our legal counsel, we’ll wait to hear from them and take it from there.”
She said there were inaccuracies in the application that the group reported to Westpower, and later to the Fast Track panel, but were not granted the opportunity to remedy the errors or comment on the proposal, underscoring flaws in the process.
Westpower’s own application noted the effects of construction, while temporary, would be very high even after efforts to mitigate them, and operational effects on recreation values in Morgan Gorge and Kiwi Flat would remain high post mitigation.
According to the panel, the scheme involved a weir and intake structure at the top of Morgan Gorge which would divert up to 23 cubic metres a second of Waitaha River water into a 1.5-kilometre-long pressurised water tunnel down to a power station and back into the river.
Concern over Alpine Fault impact
In an open letter to Westpower’s board of directors, engineering geologist Kevin England and health and safety specialist Matthew Bennett – both past presidents of Whitewater NZ – calculated the risk to workers tasked with building the tunnel, reminding the board they could be held personally responsible for health and safety breaches.
The pair said Westpower was proposing building the weir 3 kilometres from the Alpine Fault, one of the most active faultlines in the world.
Research showed there was a 75 percent probability of an Alpine Fault earthquake in the next 50 years, and a four out of five chance it would be a magnitude 8 or higher.
“This will cause severe ground shaking at the tunnel site, inevitably causing widespread rockfall and tunnel collapses.”
There was a 100 percent chance of workers dying if the tunnel collapsed with them inside, England and Bennett wrote.
Using details from Westpower’s application, publicly available information and industry standards, the pair concluded there was a one in 160 chance of a fatality, which doubled to one in 80 if the worker took part in the two year construction period.
Between 2010 to 2020 (which included the Pike River mine disaster) the annual individual fatality risk for the mining industry was around 1 in 1000, and around 1 in 5000 for the construction industry. Internationally, the acceptable level of fatality risk was 1 in 1,000,000, although in some high risk industries a figure of 1 in 1000 was tolerated for short periods, England said.
The Waitaha tunnelling project’s risk level was least five to ten times higher than even the highest risk industrial activities in other places, the pair wrote.
The Waitaha River, at Kiwi Flat. Supplied / Copyright: Neil Silverwood
England and Bennett noted the quake hazard also posed a financial risk.
An Alpine Fault event would cause large scale landslides, rock avalanches, deposits of metres of rock and the permanent destruction of the facility, meaning a 75 percent chance of the project’s failure over its design life of 50 years.
The Department of Conservation (DOC) declined to comment while it reviewed the decision, but the Fast Track panel noted DOC wanted substantial changes to the proposal.
DOC told the panel the project represented a semi-industrial activity being introduced into a near pristine setting, and would fundamentally alter the Waitaha Valley, cause a dramatic change to Morgan Gorge and severely compromise people’s experience of the area.
It argued for larger compensation payments for the effects on peka peka or long tail bats, blue duck whio, lizards, recreational visitors and more.
In its comments, DOC described the Waitaha Valley as having “ecological, landscape and recreational values of local, regional, national and international significance”.
“It is DOC’s view that the proposal will result in the fundamental loss of natural character, solitude and remoteness that underpin the Waitaha Valley characteristics of a back country-remote zone.”
The New Zealand Conservation Authority told the panel the project breached conservation policies and strategies and stated it “strongly believed that this meant the project should not be proceed”.
But Westpower general manager generation and technology Rodger Griffiths said the project had a small footprint and a low environmental impact.
He said there was “still a lot of water to go under the bridge” but that the company would now begin detailed investigations.
The plant would improve energy resilience and security of supply for the coast, Griffiths said.
“It’ll provide about 120 to 140 gigawatt hours per year, that’s about half the electricity demand for the West Coast.”
Griffiths did not directly address FMC’s concerns around consultation, errors in a report on the recreational erects of the scheme and other claims, but said some of the group’s issues were raised through the New Zealand Conservation Authority’s submission.
“Even if they were found to be true – and they didn’t find that – but even if they were found to be completely true, [the panel found] it wouldn’t have had any impact on the outcome.
“The decision would have been the same, so we’re comfortable the decision is sound.”
Safety was the company’s “number one priority”, and Westpower was employing tunnelling experts that knew exactly what the risks were and how to mitigate them, Griffiths said.
The project would not go ahead unless Westpower was comfortable it could be done safely, he said.
Green Party environment spokesperson Lan Pham. RNZ / Conan Young
Critics including Green Party environment spokesperson Lan Pham have referred to the proposal as a zombie project, resurrected via Fast Track after being declined via other processes.
The $200m cost to provide power to 12,000 homes worked out at almost $20,000 per household, money better spent on expanding solar technologies or other solutions which did not rely on destroying wild places, she said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
