The Otago Regional Council has turned down for a second time an application by Southern Clams to finish off Bluff oysters in Otago Harbour.
Nearly six months after announcing its proposal, to offer live oysters on the shell straight from Otago Harbour, Southern Clams has again failed to get its application for resource consent accepted by the regional council.
Its first application for a coastal permit to undertake aquaculture activities was rejected in April on the grounds it was incomplete.
The proposal involved bringing 1.5 million, 2-year-old farmed oysters from Bluff Harbour to Dunedin and re-lay them in Otago Harbour for up to four weeks before harvesting them for domestic and export markets.
In rejecting that application the council said it wanted more detail on the structures that would be used, navigational impacts, effects on recreational values and monitoring.
The company reapplied for consent, but that was also turned down by the regional council in May.
ORC resource management director Selva Selvarajah said the company had failed to provide all the information needed for a project of that scale and type of activity.
Since changes to the Resource Management Act regarding consent application, the council had been rejecting poor applications because of insufficient information. The council was bound by the RMA to gather certain information, Dr Selvarajah said.
Very few applications had been rejected twice under the new system.
Southern Clams operation manager Dave Redshaw said the company was meeting the regional council next week to discuss its need for detailed information.
The company wanted to be ''flexible'' in its approach as it was the first time such an operation had been done in Otago Harbour, he said.
''It hasn't been done here before. It's a development thing.''
Flexibility would allow the company to change or modify its approach if needed, he said.
By next week's meeting it hoped to have information from Maritime New Zealand and local iwi.
