Clearance of vegetation in the lower Waitaki River from the Waitaki dam to the sea should be a condition on Meridian Energy Ltd if it builds a $1 billion power scheme, the Lower Waitaki River Management Society says.
The society wants that condition on four resource consents for water for the north bank tunnel concept power scheme if the Environment Court gives approval.
Meridian promised it would clear a fairway along the lower river, and has already reached agreement to do that with the Waitaki Protection Trust and Environment Canterbury (ECan).
But the society wants the court to go a step further and enshrine that in resource consents for the new scheme.
When ECan granted consents for the scheme, the fairway clearance was a condition.
However, in an interim decision in September last year, the Environment Court suggested removing it.
The court said the vegetation clearance to the sea was desirable.
However, it was not required to mitigate directly any adverse effects of the power scheme.
The court suggested it could only impose a condition for vegetation removal over the length of the new scheme, from the Waitaki dam tunnel intake to the Stonewall outfall into the river.
"Our concern is the applicant [Meridian] will spend significant sums of money on fairway clearance below Stonewall when there are other more direct and valuable forms of mitigation which require funding," the court said.
The society's legal counsel, Camilla Owen, agreed Meridian had provided for the extra clearance in side agreements, but said the society still wanted that as a consents condition.
It would not put extra expense on Meridian because it had already agreed to do it.
A condition would ensure an ongoing obligation to do the work and avoid the potential for changes in any private agreements in the future.
Ms Owen pointed out the vegetation clearance to the sea would also mitigate some of the effects of the power scheme between the Waitaki dam and Stonewall by providing more feeding and breeding habitat for braided river birds, a more mobile riverbed, braiding, appropriate channel alignments and amenity values, including better access for anglers and hunters.
Another interested party, Dugald MacTavish of Moeraki, had been involved, like others, in meetings with Meridian to negotiate acceptable conditions.
Those meetings had been constructive, and had resolved many issues.
"There remain, however, a number of requests to changes to the conditions from me that Meridian was unwilling to agree to and which seem important enough not to simply relinquish," he saidMr MacTavish put to the court a number of changes he still wanted to the conditions, including new alternatives.
"Given the scale and probable permanence of the effect on the lower Waitaki ... I consider it is beholden upon us all to develop at the outset the best possible combination of conditions," he said.
He had almost 20 issues he wanted to see clarified, included or changed.
