A public meeting has been called in Twizel to give people the
chance to learn about and debate proposals for 16 new dairy
farms, with up to 17,850 cows, intended for the Ohau and
Omarama areas.
The meeting on Monday at 7.30pm has been organised by Graham
Stewart, a Twizel resident for 37 years, who hopes the
gathering will fill the 250-seat theatrette at the Twizel
Events Centre.
The Twizel public meeting is being called to inform people
about the proposals from three companies - Five Rivers Ltd,
Southdown Holdings Ltd and Williamson Holdings Ltd - and
their projects' potential downstream environmental effects.
When contacted yesterday, Mr Stewart said he hoped
representatives from Environment Canterbury (ECan) would be
at the meeting to outline the proposals and resource consents
process, along with Waitaki First chairwoman HelenBrookes and
other speakers.
Representatives from dairy farm companies were welcome to
attend.
A director of two of the farm companies, Southdown Holdings
and Williamson Holdings, Richard Peacocke, yesterday said he
did not want to comment on the meeting and whether the
companies would be represented.
Mr Stewart said information would be available at the meeting
on how people could make submissions on applications by the
three companies for resource consents for the dairy farms,
including discharging up to 1.783 million litres a day of
dairy effluent to land.
The meeting was open to anyone, not just residents in the
area, and Mr Stewart said he wanted "both sides of the
story".
A map of the proposed dairy farms would be available, along
with submission forms and information on how to make
submissions.
"We would like another couple of hundred other submissions
from people," he said.
Mr Stewart said he decided to organise the meeting after
seeing ECan's advertisement calling for submissions on the
resource consent applications from the three companies.
"I looked at them and saw where they are going to put
effluent ponds and the effluent on to land - it is going into
the groundwater which will affect the whole area over the
next 30 years," he said.
The 45,000 people who visited the area over the holiday
season for fishing, swimming and boating would all be
affected by that.
Submissions close on December 18 for the Five Rivers and
Southdown applications and January 18 for Williamson
Holdings.
