No pruning for trees after lines buried

The ditch where power lines along a stretch of the Ladies Mile highway were put underground last...
The ditch where power lines along a stretch of the Ladies Mile highway were put underground last week. Photo: Guy Williams
Half of a row of landmark trees along the Ladies Mile highway near Queenstown will now be spared from the pruning saw.

High-voltage overhead lines running along the southern side of the highway, between Stalker Rd and Howards Dr, have been put underground.

That means about half of the 29 exotic trees, disfigured by years of hard pruning to keep them away from the wires, will now be left alone.

The work has been paid for by Queenstown Country Club developers Sanderson Group. The company offered to underground the lines along its highway frontage as part of its special housing area application for the retirement village.

Aurora Energy caused a public outcry in 2016 when it announced it would cut down the trees because they were growing into the lines.

The late Bill Walker tended the oak, cherry, beech, ash, maple, sweet chestnut and horse chestnut trees  on his land for more than 25 years before his death in 2014.

His family later relinquished their interest in the trees, giving Aurora the authority to remove them.

But the company backtracked after a public meeting and intervention by then-Queenstown Lakes mayor Vanessa van Uden, and the council agreed to pay for annual trimmings.

The council also offered to pay for half the estimated $1 million cost of putting the lines underground provided Aurora paid for the other half, but the company refused.

Queenstown wine pioneer Alan Brady was part of the campaign to save the trees.

He said the undergrounding work was "very good news", but he hoped a way could be found to bury the rest of the lines.

Given the millions of dollars that would soon be spent on developing new housing in the Ladies Mile area, the cost of undergrounding the wires seemed relatively trivial.

"It’s a very significant avenue, so half a million dollars — I would’ve thought someone can find that.

"It’s a piece of landscape that’s valuable."

But Aurora spokeswoman Karen Melville said it had no immediate plans to put the remaining lines underground.

"For now, regular tree trimming is a more economic approach than undergrounding.

"We would consider undergrounding as an option if, in the future, those overhead lines needed to be upgraded to support increased electricity demand."

It would pay for ongoing pruning to keep the trees a safe distance from the remaining lines.

The cost of that would be "considerably lower" than before because the section of lines affected was shorter.

Council communications adviser Lu Morris said the council paid for the trees to be pruned in August last year, but that was the last time.

Aurora was responsible for managing the trees because they were on private land.

The lines supply 2600 consumers in Arrowtown, Lower Shotover and Lake Hayes Estate.

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