The Otago Regional Council has served an abatement notice to Contact Energy relating to the operation of Clyde Dam.
Clyde Power Station. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
After earlier inquiries by RNZ about whether an abatement notice was being considered were rebuffed, the council this week confirmed Contact has been served with an abatement notice.
The notice requires the energy giant to get its plan for management of the landscape and visual amenity of the Kawarau Arm of Lake Dunstan approved by early next year.
The Landscape and Visual Amenity Management Plan (LVAMP) was due in 2019.
Community group the Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust and Otago regional councillor Michael Laws, who lived in Cromwell, said the council had dropped the ball on holding Contact to account.
Both expressed concerns over the state of the Kawarau Arm and believed the community needed to be involved on any decision over its future management.
The Kawarau Arm had in recent years become a shallow, and at times smelly and dangerous, mess, due to silt that used to wash down from the Kawarau River and onwards down Mata Au being trapped and accumulating for three decades.
Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust and Laws had serious concerns the Kawarau Arm would further degrade.
The Otago Regional Council currently have a once-in-a-five-year chance to review the conditions of Contact Energy's consent to operate Clyde Dam, including the ability to reassess management of the Kawarau Arm.
The council's regulatory and communications general manager Richard Saunders said no decision had been made on taking that option.
"ORC is still in the process of making a decision on whether to review the conditions. The deadline is 24 August," he said.
"An abatement notice has been issued to Contact Energy requiring compliance with the conditions of the resource consent, specifically the submission on an updated LVAMP for approval. Contact Energy have submitted an updated plan for comment in accordance with the consent. This is currently being reviewed by ORC and comments will be provided back to Contact Energy in due course."
A draft plan was provided to the council in January 2020 and resubmitted last month.
The council would not make the draft Landscape and Visual Amenity Plan public, and stated public consultation on the plan was not required under the resource consent.
But Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust chair Duncan Faulkner said now was the time to review the consent conditions and ensure management of the Kawarau Arm matched community expectations.
"This is the time that the community really needs to rally together and show their support for the trust and show their support to council to show courage and leadership to actually get these conditions reviewed so we can have a solid plan, that isn't looking five years into the future but 100 years into the future.
"Biodiversity doesn't work in years, it works in centuries and we've got to be looking that far ahead. Right now we're not even up-to-date, so there's so much work that has to be done but this is an opportunity to get started. It should be seen as an opportunity, but we just can't afford to miss it."
The trust had written to the council again emploring them to review the consent, but their response suggested it was unlikely, Faulkner said.
That was disappointing.
"I think it would be catastrophic for the lake [to delay a potential review]. The cracks are already starting to show in the dam's resource consent conditions and we have an opportunity to review those conditions for another five years."
Silt has been trapped for three decades, making part of Lake Dunstan smelly and dangerous, community groups say. Photo:
Laws said the council was letting the community down.
"The Otago Regional Council's dropped the ball a lot over the last decade and in this particular case it should've been involved in this issue five years ago. It's played no proactive role since and has had to have its legal responsibilities pointed out to it - and for that you can thank Guardians of Lake Dunstan [Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust]."
However, he was also critical of Contact Energy.
"Contact have run a commercial operation, not a community operation and they have been involved at placing profit always at the heart of everything they do. So if it's going to cost money, take time, basically ingratiating themselves to the community - that's never been a priority for them."
Contact's head of hydro generation Boyd Brinsdon did not accept that.
"We take our obligations to the community very seriously, in the form of both mitigating adverse effects of our generation activities and through good corporate behaviour, contributing to the community and complying with our resource consents.
"Just because the [Landscape and Visual Amenity Management] plan is yet to be approved by ORC doesn't mean we have stopped managing the effects of hydro-generation on the bed of the Kawarau Arm. We continue to undertake those activities outlined in the previous plan as well as what we have proposed in the reviewed plan."
The company did not intend to challenge Otago Regional Council's abatement notice.
"We had already submitted the re-drafted LVAMP to the ORC prior to receiving the abatement notice and the process we are going through right now is further consultation on the plan with the ORC, CODC and the Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust, prior to it being returned to ORC for approval," Brinsdon said.
"This is a complicated piece of work and we are taking all due care and consideration. We engage external experts for reassessment and are involved in community consultation via the Central Otago District Council and Otago Regional Council, this includes constructive ongoing discussions with Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust.
"We will be meeting the requirements of the abatement notice and will continue to consult on the reviewed plan to meet this deadline."