Aurora Energy Ltd has been given resource consent for a $2.5 million upgrade of power lines along Riverbank Rd and Cardrona Valley Rd at Wanaka.
Unless there was an appeal to the Environment Court, the 18km project to install a second set of lines should be under way soon and finished by April next year, Delta project and operations manager David Paterson said.
Delta has the management contract to do the work for Aurora Energy Ltd, which owns poles, lines, cables and substations throughout the Dunedin area and in Central Otago.
Some preparatory work was already under way on Riverbank Rd.
The upgrade starts at the corner of Riverbank and Orchard Rds and continues up Cardrona Valley Rd.
The existing 11kV line will be augmented by a 33\66kV overbuild for most of its length.
Although a 33kV line is only necessary in the short term, Aurora expects a 66kV supply will be necessary to service the future needs of Cardrona Valley and the township.
The project will replace all 191 poles in the line.
Seven of the poles will also be relocated and two additional poles erected upstream of Mt Barker Rd, in order to cross the Cardrona River.
The Queenstown Lakes District Council hearing was held in August before commissioners Jane Taylor, of Queenstown, and Sally Middleton, of Wanaka, who released their decision last week.
At the hearing, Mt Barker residents Conway Powell and Rudi Sanders agreed a higher voltage electricity supply would meet rising power demands but asked for the lines to be relocated to a different route or buried.
They said Aurora had not recognised or offered to mitigate any detrimental visual effects the 11m high poles and extra lines would have on them.
They were also concerned about effects on health, devaluation of property, inequitable treatment compared to mitigation being offered to Riverbank Rd residents and further commercial development in the Cardrona Valley.
The commissioners said the submitters' request was not practical, technically not feasible and not cost effective.
A second set of lines installed on a different route would double the number of poles and increase maintenance costs, they said.
The commissioners also said the potential for a line upgrade was reasonably foreseeable at the time the submitters purchased their properties, so it was inappropriate to now ask Wanaka and Cardrona electricity users to meet burial costs, particularly when the increased adverse effects on the land were not significant.
The cost of mitigating the visual impact of the line upgrade should be borne by the property owners and Aurora had agreed to facilitate a mitigation process, the commissioners said.
Mr Paterson said the process for claiming compensation in the event of property devaluation was set out in the Electricity Act.
