The Queenstown Lakes District Council's planning consultants say the site chosen for three new farm buildings at Rob Rosa Station in the Cardrona Valley would be threatened by an unacceptable flood hazard risk and the resource consent application should be declined.
The station leasehold owner, a property trust run by Dunedin company director Lane Hocking, wants consent to build a homestead, a dwelling for farm workers and equipment sheds near the Cardrona River.
Lakes Environmental planner Kristy Jennings recommended the planning commissioners refuse the consent, saying there was insufficient evidence provided to address the flood-risk hazards.
Rob Rosa counsel Jan Caunter said the recommendations being made by a council regulatory planner and the Otago Regional Council's flood manager represented an overly "theoretical and purist" approach to the proposal.
The risk of a flooding hazard was accepted by Rob Rosa because the chance of it occurring was so low as to be negligible.
"Certainly, there is no evidence that there is risk to human safety or life posed by this development," she said at the resource consent hearing in Wanaka on Wednesday.
Rob Rosa is a 3700ha high-country station on the eastern side of the Cardrona Valley, an area classified as an outstanding natural landscape subject to stringent planning regulations.
ORC natural hazards analyst Richard Woods told Queenstown Lakes planning commissioners Jane Taylor and Sally Middleton the proposed buildings were sited on a flood plain.
"The proposal would place a number of people into a hazardous situation - one that does not exist at present."
Even moderate floods had the potential to isolate the proposed site from the only main access route into and out of the valley, Mr Woods said.
Ms Caunter said there were very few areas in the district not exposed to at least some risk of a natural hazard, "however remote" that risk was.
Rob Rosa accepted, and was able to adequately mitigate, any risks associated with the low probability of a flood, she said.
The commissioners reserved their decision.
