Hearing out of council's league?

Small district councils may no longer have to deal with major infrastructure consents like TrustPower's multimillion-dollar hydro proposal on the Wairau River if changes to Resource Management Act go ahead.

A report on the resource consent process for the $275m hydro scheme, which was given the green light by the council in August last year, said it was difficult for smaller councils like the Marlborough District Council to process major infrastructure consents.

The report by aquatic ecologist Brent Cowie was commissioned by the Environment Minister Nick Smith. Released on Friday, it suggested introducing the use of interim decisions and outlined the importance of having a mix of skills and experience on consent hearing panels.

The case is now in the hands of the Environment Court, which will start hearing appeals next week.

The report, also found there was no conflict of interest with commissioner Tony Willy being on the resource consent panel.

In January 2008, just before the conditions hearing, hydro opponents, Save the Wairau, claimed Mr Willy had an undisclosed conflict of interest via his ownership of shares in Ecodyne Ltd, a firm that develops environmentally benign forms of power generation.

Dr Smith said on Friday that the Wairau hydro proposal had not been a positive experience for either the applicant or the objectors.

"A council such as Marlborough only gets a huge consent application like this once in a generation, so inevitably it will not have the systems or expertise to be able to deal with it effectively," he said.

According to Mr Cowie's report, submitters raised strong criticisms of the hearing, particularly in regard to the split hearing process – an initial hearing saw the consents granted without conditions, while a separate hearing was held to map out conditions. The decisions were released 13 months apart.

Other criticisms included that the hearing panel did not include experts in fields such as aquatic ecology and engineering, which led to a lengthened hearing process and added expense for participants.

The report said submitters believed the rules and procedures for the hearing were unclear and appeared to change as the hearing proceeded and TrustPower's legal team was seen as aggressive and divisive by some submitters but competent and professional by the hearing panel.

Mr Cowie said that in future applicants should be encouraged to supply draft consent applications, use pre-hearing meetings more to save time and set hearing rules at the start of proceedings.

- The Marlborough Express

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