A ridge too far?

Last year, I blogged about the Palmerston North City Council jumping into bed with Mighty River Power to develop a windfarm behind Massey University. Unlike most wind projects, I was a dubious about this one, because it was located in the middle of a reserve. Today, the council held an open day as part of its consultation process on the plan, so I went along to take a look at the site. For a token fee, I was given a bus ride to the top of the Tararuas, then a ride along the ridge in an army truck to look at their anemometer mast. It was certainly windy up there, and the ecological impacts seem low - a road would need to be widened, and some "scrub" (which others would probably call "regenerating native forest") cleared, and some of this can be repaired later - but I'm still more than a little dubious about the project.

The first reason to be dubious is that they want to develop a reserve. As with the Bay of Plenty Electricity plan to flood part of a DOC reserve on the Kaituna River, this would almost certainly be ruled out as prima facie incompatible with the purpose of the reserve (the Turitea Reserve is held and managed by the PNCC as a Local Purpose Reserve under the Reserves Act 1977, for the purposes of water supply and the protection of indigenous flora and fauna). So the PNCC has come up with the cunning plan of changing that purpose (as permitted under s24A of the Act) to allow it to also be used for renewable energy generation. Which immediately gets us into the second reason for being dubious: the whiff of corruption surrounding the process. The Palmerston North City Council will be receiving "milestone payments" from Mighty River Power at various stages of the project. They've already received $150,000 for signing a conditional contract, they'll reportedly get another $250,000 when they change the purpose of the reserve and its management plan to allow wind turbines, and even more if Mighty River gets resource consent. This completely undermines the integrity of the process, and makes it look like local government is for sale to the highest bidder. Even if the process was handled with scrupulous neutrality, the fact that the council stands to financially benefit if and only if it makes the "right" decision will mean that it could always be called into doubt. And that simply isn't good enough. Finally, there's the way they're playing fast and loose with the financial information. Council spokespeople have repeatedly claimed that the project will lead to a windfall for the city which will "keep rates down". At the same time, they are denying requests under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 for information on expected revenue on the basis that it is "commercially sensitive". Clearly, its not so sensitive that they can't gloat about it in public, and the whole thing smacks of an attempt to evade oversight.

If it wasn't located on a reserve, the project would probably be acceptable (a key question would be what that "scrub" would develop into if left alone). But given the location and the Council's approach, I will probably oppose it. There is plenty of space left on the Tararuas for windfarms, and I'd like to see it filled first before we start thinking about opening reserves for development.