No pay-outs on Waitaki proposal

Meridian Energy Ltd has not agreed to any payments to government departments as part of its plan to build a new $900 million power scheme on the lower Waitaki River.

That includes the Department of Conservation, Meridian's external relations manager Clare Shaw said yesterday.

The Otago Daily Times asked Meridian about any agreements or payments it may have made with government departments after revelations it had a confidential agreement with Doc, which included a payment of $175,000, over its Project Hayes wind farm.

The money would go towards Doc improving public access to the Rock and Pillar Conservation area, and research into the eastern falcon.

Yesterday, Miss Shaw said such agreements were not unusual under the Resource Management Act process.

In 1991, an agreement had been negotiated as part of renewing upper Waitaki power scheme consents under which Meridian's predecessor, ECNZ, had agreed to cash-fund Doc's Project River Recovery programme.

That agreement still continued today, enhancing the environment and injecting a considerable amount of money in jobs and services into the Twizel region.

However, in the case of the proposed lower Waitaki power project - the north bank tunnel concept scheme - no agreements or payments had been negotiated with government departments, Miss Shaw said.

When an Environment Canterbury (ECan) hearings panel of three commissioners heard submissions on the north bank scheme in 2007, the Conservation Department did not make a submission.

The hearings panel was told that was because government departments had been instructed by the Labour government's cabinet not to make submissions.

The government itself did not make a "whole of government" submission, as it did for Project Hayes.

Groups opposing the north bank scheme, such as Waitaki First, and the New Zealand and Central South Island Fish and Game Councils, were critical of the cabinet ban on submissions.

New Zealand Fish and Game Council chief executive Bryce Johnson told the hearings panel that put not-for-profit organisations such as fish and game councils, environmental, recreational and community groups in the position of fulfilling the roles that should be played by government departments.