If there is to be one critically advantageous long-term
outcome from the Environment Court's rejection of the Project
Hayes wind farm it should be that the nation's energy
planners - including the present Government - will be
compelled, finally, to confront the need to give far more
weight to size and proximity of generation facilities to the
major electricity markets, particularly in the top half of
the North Island.
For too long, the default position has been that the South
Island offers endless bounty and is simply waiting to be
exploited, regardless of the infrastructural costs associated
with conveying captured energy to end-users and the
destruction of the natural environment.
One of the more emphatic arguments of the opposers to Project
Hayes was one often advanced but rarely accepted in project
hearings: visual environmental pollution, in this case
entailing up to 176 giant turbines on the Lammermoors.
It is a largely subjective argument but it has been gaining
potency and appears now to have been acknowledged.
It is most decidedly the position of a large numbers of
residents in Otago, and of visitors to it, that the beauty of
its lakes, rivers and mountain ranges is unsurpassed and
should be preserved against the large-scale industrial
development which Project Hayes represented.
The South needs to comprehensively put a permanent high value
on its natural beauty: many, quite rightly, regard it as
priceless.
The destruction of the wild Clutha River by hydro-electric
dams was mourned by earlier generations; the original Project
Aqua to so modify the Waitaki River as to effectively wreck
any remaining natural qualities on its lower part drew
vigorous opposition, substantially on aesthetic grounds, from
a new generation.
Another weight of objection remains unanswered with regard to
a dam on the Nevis River.
Clearly, the defenders of the natural environment - so far as
it actually is in that state today - are gathering strength.
This cannot be surprising where official policy champions a
"100% pure" environment illusion.
There is a strong economic argument to preserve such natural
features as remain in the South and to reject any further
large-scale modification of them by industry.
If New Zealand is to continue to earn a substantial portion
of its revenues from visitors, let alone try to maintain its
claimed natural purity, then it must give the most
significant parts of the landscape a higher priority.
It does so with national parks and the like and in many other
places where reserves of one kind or another exist, but the
Project Hayes and Project Aqua hearings have shown that the
"environment" is not limited to the world's hunger for
natural places, pretty beaches, mountain ranges and lakes.
Those hearings also exposed another weakness in that the
State, content to promote the 100% pure fantasy and claim the
benefits from it, is not always perceived to act as public
defender of that vision.
The secret deals by which the Department of Conservation
received monies from the promoters of the projects quid pro
quo for not objecting to them have not only undermined the
department's public credibility but destroyed what hopes
existed - however misplaced - that the department's priority
is preservation rather than pragmatism.
The strongest economic argument for Project Hayes was the
apparent value of wind power as a renewable energy resource.
But Meridian Energy's failure to provide a sufficiently
thorough or convincing cost-benefit analysis of its scheme
must stand as a warning about the deceptive enchantments of
"renewable energy", and of the need for all the true costs of
development to the community to be considered.
Inevitably, such an analysis was weakened when the major
markets for electricity principally lie far to the north of
the proposed Otago site.
It is illogical for power planners not to be placing greater
emphasis on seeking generating sources closer to commercial
demand.
New Zealand's last taboo is nuclear energy, yet it was once
officially recommended to be introduced in the form of a
generating plant near Auckland in the late 1970s.
That was shelved as being not needed before the millennium.
It needs to be considered again in discussions about
alternative energy sources, as indeed must be energy
conservation measures and, above all, actual need.
The provision of energy is one of the biggest challenges
facing this country.
The agreed view between the Government and power companies,
that generating capacity be increased with an emphasis on
renewable energy, needs closer scrutiny.
Part of that view also includes the inhibition of individual
objection: despite such draconian policies as demanding
security for costs from poorly-funded objectors, Project
Hayes has demonstrated the absolute need for the closest
possible examination, with the communities most affected by
major projects having a principal say in that consideration.
Here, not much more than a handful of private citizens felt
bound to take on the twin forces of a state-owned enterprise
and the State itself - one that demanded "whole of
government" support for the project - to uphold environmental
values universally claimed to be cherished.
They have won a victory that in time the nation will come to
cherish, just as did those pioneering campaigners who saved
Lake Manapouri.
