Dam it: West Coasters resigned to losing river

BY NAOMI ARNOLD

In 2008, when Karamea tramper and conservationist Margaret Rich heard about Meridian Energy's proposal to build a dam on the Mokihinui River, she went to the site, stood in the tumbling water and gazed up, trying to visualise a dam the height of a 20-storey building looming above the wild river.

"It was indescribably horrible to imagine what it would look like," Ms Rich said at the time. "They talk about renewable energy, but damming an unmodified river and drowning an extensive area of pristine native forest is not energy from a renewable source. What's renewable about destroying the river?"

Two years later, following approval of Meridian's resource consent application earlier this month, Ms Rich is more measured and sighs down the phone.

"What can I say? It was a shock."

Her submission was one of 298 against the dam, a densely packed 12 pages arguing the scheme was too destructive and too big; that smaller hydro developments would be better; that proposed mitigation measures weren't enough; and the proposal would ruin the river and its wildlife forever.

But Meridian spokesman Alan Seay says the state-owned power company is "delighted, obviously".

The company has now cleared a massive hurdle in its proposal to build the $300 million dam and power station on the Mokihinui, which will involve flooding the gorge to create a skinny and winding 14-kilometre lake – the largest inundation of public conservation land since Manapouri. The 80-megawatt power station is expected to produce 310 to 360 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, enough to power 45,000 homes. There will be a new transmission line, and more power to feed into the national grid.

Mr Seay says Meridian hasn't decided yet if it will appeal against the more than 200 consent conditions but he isn't aware of "anything in the decision that's making us think along those lines".

They include restrictions on noise and dust, shifting endangered whio (blue duck) and snails to a new predator-controlled area, upgrading historic tracks, and monitoring, trapping and transferring elvers and other native fish.

The consent decision was split. Dr Greg Ryder, the lone ecologist on the three-person panel, believed the dam to be too destructive, while the other two, Christchurch civil engineer John Lumsden and West Coast regional vouncillor Terry Archer, felt the benefits outweighed the environmental impacts.

Those impacts include loss of sediment transport, loss of wildlife habitat, drowning the river, destroying the gorge's natural character, affecting native fish migration, displacing endangered native snails, destroying a blue duck habitat, drowning recreational rapids, and producing carbon dioxide and methane emissions from rotting rainforest.

There was also the question of the dam destroying the river's mauri, or life force, until local iwi Ngati Waewae withdrew its objections after negotiating for Meridian to contribute to a cultural fund.

That particular point sticks in the craw of Rick Barber, a long-time West Coast conservationist who made a submission on behalf of his iwi. The mana of his opposition still stands, he says. "Any Maori who claims to be a Maori as I am could not [justify] blocking an awa [river] like that."

But he's not surprised that economic values triumphed. "That's how powers that be have thought throughout history. People think it'll go ahead anyway, so they might as well get out of it what they can."

Despite environmental objections, few on the West Coast would doubt a reliable power supply is needed. Some of the biggest users are industry – like Westport's Holcim cement plant, which uses 50GWh a year.

The Coast has always had a dodgy power supply. It relies on a lone transmission line winding its way from the southern dams across the spine of the South Island and, as a result, it has some of the highest power prices in the country.

Meridian says the new dam will guarantee supply, and substantially cut transmission losses at peak times. It should also lessen "unplanned outages".

Meridian's cheery promotional DVD for the Mokihinui project says it hopes that money saved by generating power at the source can be passed on, though it hasn't actually promised cheaper power.

But that's a widespread belief, Ms Rich says. She was hoping two other projects on the Coast – the Arnold River scheme being pursued by TrustPower, plus Hydro Developments Ltd's Stockton Plateau Hydro Project – granted resource consent two years ago would provide enough power so that the Mokihinui project wasn't needed.

THE Stockton plan would use polluted water from the Stockton coalmine to turn its turbines, depositing the water offshore. The scheme was widely backed by the Greens, the West Coast Conservation Board, West Coast MPs and Forest & Bird as making the best of a bad situation. But that's under threat. Government-owned Solid Energy has appealed the scheme and is planning its own.

Downstream, at the river mouth, dairy farmer Brian "Sos" Morgan says residents there are mostly in support of the dam. Mr Morgan is chairman of the Mokihinui Ratepayers Association. An unreliable power supply is all right for him, he has a generator. But the situation can't last.

"At the moment, if we have a major earthquake, we don't have any power."

He has always welcomed the dam "as long as the whitebait can still get up the river". He says the issue hasn't exactly divided the community, with just a bit of graffiti "telling Meridian where to go in four-letter words".

He knows the arguments for and against the dam intimately, though the major issue for him is beach erosion. The sea has been eating away at Mokihinui's shoreline at a metre a year for about 50 years.

Until now the town, with fewer than 40 people, has had to fix the erosion itself. But Meridian will buy the town two-thirds of a seawall to protect it, so he's satisfied.

Having hunted and fished the area his whole life, Mr Morgan is looking at the dam as a positive. He says he's getting older now, and the dam will give him much easier access to the back country.

"There's a whole crowd [the Mokihinui-Lyell Backcountry Trust] trying to put a track in, there should be better trout fishing and possibly boating."

Opening up the gorge for others – that's what Buller Mayor Pat McManus is welcoming, as well as the power. He was firm in 2008, and he's firm now. "We hear a lot of hysteria about the pristine wilderness of the area, but very few New Zealanders can get in there to enjoy it," he said back then.

Now he welcomes the consent approval as another step toward getting more power to the Coast, and more recreation opportunities for ratepayers and visitors. It was calculated only about 300 people a year visited the gorge in its natural state.

But Whitewater New Zealand's Tony Ward-Holmes says it is hardly fair to destroy the river for short-term gain. He used to be one of those who kayaked the Mokihinui but now doubts anyone will bother. The river has easily accessible lower-grade rapids, unusual on the West Coast. With a dam in place, kayakers must paddle 14km across the lake to reach rapids higher up.

He says they'll be appealing against the decision, but it's one of many they're fighting. He ticks off the rivers: "Waingawa in the Wairarapa, Matakitaki, Hurunui, Matiri, Mokau, Waimakariri, Waitaha south of Hari Hari, Nevis ... most people these days have no idea what we used to have but don't have now."

This is just round two of the scrap. The three-week countdown for lodging appeals began on April 12, and he says Whitewater NZ will appeal. The Greens and Forest & Bird have hinted they will, too.

Meanwhile, in Karamea, Ms Rich flicks idly through a booklet about the new, "dead" lake. She campaigned against Manapouri in the 1960s; now against the Mokihinui. It feels the same. "But there's not so many people – it's not such an iconic place. The protest has been left to the locals, and nobody's really listening."

Meridian's website video presentation invites viewers to "look into the future" to a stunning new lake, a "sheltered haven" used by locals and visitors alike. "No more two-hour car trips to the nearest lake."

Digital kayakers cross the new lake, and computer-generated pictures show the waters lapping at the gorge sides. It doesn't show a mock-up of the dam itself. Nelson Mail

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