Meridian's plan for a 210 MW wind farm at Makara near Wellington has been unanimously granted resource consent. An appeal is still possible, but its a good start. Meanwhile, this brings the total of wind generation consented in 2005 to over 600 MW - more than the output of the Clyde Dam. And unlike that project, it'll be built in a couple of years rather than a decade...
Interestingly, one of the people quoted on the segment on Checkpoint tonight said that the decision was in part driven by pride in Wellington's reputation as a windy place and a desire "to catch up to the Manawatu". Which is good to see...
Also on the wind fron, the Greater Wellington Regional Council has given the go-ahead for council land to be used for a smaller wind farm on at Puketiro near Whitby. The next stage is finding a developer, then applying for resource consent.
Of course, the naysayers are appealing the ruling in the Environment Court.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I like the idea of wind energy (renewable resource, low pollution etc.) I like the idea of environmentalists being hoist by their own petard (the R.M.A.) even more :-)
I'll bet, even in their wildest nightmares, they didn't realise that the mechanism they created to allow them to nationalise most of the assets in the country would, inevitably, be weilded against them as well.
ROTFLMAO just thinking about it :-)
They're perfectly entitled to appeal. The RMA process is essentially one of discovering and balancing competing interests and rights, and consenting authorities may not always do it correctly. That's why there's review by the courts.
ReplyDelete(Whether the above is true in this particular case is of course for the court to find out...)
Competing rights? Really. Could you please give an example of two rights which can ever actually compete?
ReplyDeleteIf two things you call 'rights' are found to be in competition, then at least one is a privilege.
Your freedom to drive your car (or technically, freedom of movement) vs everyone else's, for a start. Or, to use an RMA example, your right to run a pig farm next to my perfume-sniffing shop. Most Libertarians would argue that such conflicts should be resolved through the courts - but what is that if not a process for discovering and balancing competing interests and rights?
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