The Otago Daily Times approached Meridian about the future of the Waitaki project, estimated to cost more than $1 billion, after it cancelled its Project Hayes wind farm in January and West Coast Mokihinui River hydro scheme last month.
Originally termed the north bank tunnel concept scheme because it was a 34km-long tunnel with one power house on the lower Waitaki River north bank, the scheme was renamed the north bank hydro project after it was changed in 2010 to a combined canal-tunnel design with two power houses.
External communications manager Claire Shaw said last week the north bank project was still "one of the medium- to long-term projects in Meridian's development pipeline".
Given its size and complexity, it remained an important project but was not a priority at this stage.
"For example, we have two wind farm options [Central Wind and Mill Creek] already consented that sit higher in the merit order," she said.
Meridian had water-only resource consents to take up to 260 cumecs from Lake Waitaki to generate an average of 1400GWh a year - enough electricity for all the homes in Christchurch.
The water-only consents were granted by the Environment Court in November 2010 and Meridian still needs land-use consents from the WaimateDistrict Council to construct the scheme. It had recently conducted all the geotechnical and feasibility investigation studies required for land-use consents and was in the process of finalising this information.
At this stage, Meridian had no immediate plans to lodge applications for land consents, Miss Shaw said.
"Our water consents provided us a window of six years to apply for the land-use consents before the water consents lapsed.
"We are working comfortably within this window," Miss Shaw said.
Meridian's board of directors would need to approve applying for land-use consents.
The north bank scheme was announced after Meridian cancelled its Waitaki River Project Aqua scheme in 2004.
After geological investigations, the north bank design was changed to a 12km tunnel from the Waitaki dam, then a canal with a base about 100m wide.
The 13km-long canal would hug the foothills north of State Highway 82, then re-enter the end tunnel.
Two power stations were proposed for the revised scheme - at the exit from the first tunnel and at the final outfall, just above the Stonewall.
