POWER Struggle

POWER Struggle
Saturday 30 October 2010
The Press

Wild river, a raft, a safety briefing.

Glenn Murdoch, our good natured and we hope responsible guide, goes through the drill. Forward paddle, backward paddle, hold, stop. Drambuie for everyone if you lose your paddle.

Then he gives us the worst-case scenario. This is when the raft capsizes with the crew in the river and not necessarily attached to the boat.

"Keep your legs in front of you and your head looking down the river," he instructs.

The chances of tipping our bulky craft seem remote to a rookie like me but Murdoch, I guess, has to go through the motions like a flight attendant giving a spiel about the aircraft crashing.

We are on the Mokihinui River, which is in a remote northern corner of the West Coast, about 40 kilometres north of Westport. The launching point for our expedition is well inland, just below the fork in the river where the North and South branches meet and just above the 16km Mokihinui Gorge.

If state-owned Meridian Energy wins the day, most of the gorge will flooded up to an 85-metre dam to be built about 15km from the river's mouth. The resulting 14km-long lake will inundate 225 hectares of pristine lowland forest and obviously the stretch of wild river we hope to travel.

Meridian has the project on first base by obtaining the required resource consents from the West Coast Regional and Buller District councils. In March, commissioners decided, two to one, to grant the consents. The Department of Conservation (DOC), Forest & Bird and Whitewater NZ are appealing and the Environment Court is expected to hear the case in 2012.

Forest & Bird field officer Debs Martin, who is sharing a raft with Green Party co-leader Russel Norman (among others), explains Meridian faces another difficult hurdle: for the dam to go ahead, Meridian needs either permission from DOC to flood the land or it needs to acquire the DOC land by swapping it for other land which will provide a net benefit to conservation. Meridian has offered 700ha of land, two blocks of which are in the Mokihinui catchment below the dam.

DOC has completed its evaluation and a draft report recommends a firm "no" to Meridian on all counts. The final decision must be made by the conservation minister.

Martin hopes the area will end up in a conservation park, a process that was "on the table" before Meridian began the consent process.

She accepts the minister could direct the department to withdraw but thinks that unlikely because DOC has thrown "unprecedented" resources at the fight.

It all looks very difficult for Meridian but its Mokihinui project manager, Chris Evans (not on the trip), who has worked on the project for four years, says Meridian will persevere, concentrating for the moment on the appeal. Meridian has withdrawn its DOC flooding application so it can enter more open discussions.

The search for land to satisfy DOC continues, he says: "It's not an easy task when DOC already administers 80 per cent of land on the West Coast."

Back at the river, the launch is getting closer. About 120 people have gathered for a 6.30am start on a dull but mercifully dry morning.

Evidence before the commissioners showed only about 300 people use the area each year. We are certainly going to boost the average.

The event has been organised by the Christchurch White Water Canoe Club, more as a statement than a protest. The assemblage has its fair share of greenies but white water people come in all sorts of political stripes. Norman is the only politician on the trip.

The first step is for the rafts and kayaks to be bundled into nets and slung beneath helicopters for the trip up to the forks. One whitebaiter has set his net in the river just below the very site where the gear and people are loaded. In a scene reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, three helicopters flying neatly behind each other descend in an urgent racket of whining rotors.

The white water people are obviously not keen on the power project. The proposed lake does not stop them using the higher and difficult North Branch of the river but it means they face a dull 14km flat paddle on the descent which is currently broken by numerous boulder- strewn rapids, quieter stretches of green water, sandy beaches, striking rock features and healthy bush.

They concede their kayaks and rafts are not often seen on the river. As the day of our adventure shows, getting kayaks and rafts up the river is a major and expensive exercise.

Although the commissioners saw the loss of white water recreation as a "significant effect" they considered the dam would provide "a more diverse range of opportunities to a much wider group of people".

Hugh Canard, a Christchurch economic development and tourism consultant, whose heroic organisational abilities make the Mokihinui statement such a success, doesn't buy that argument.

He likens his white water colleagues to the endangered blue ducks who will be supplanted by the dam lake.

"We have the same rights as anybody else. Numbers shouldn't come into it. We are saying we are the blue ducks who have been using the river and minding their own business. Then along comes whoever and wants to take it away. You're going to displace blue ducks and introduce mallards."

While a lake would no doubt increase patronage of the area, by that logic a gondola up Aoraki/Mt Cook would be fine because it would do the same thing for the mountain, he says.

In his view the commissioners overlooked that the Mokihinui is one of only three reasonably accessible rivers on the West Coast that can be used by the majority of competent kayakers.

People who want a lake experience on the coast are spoiled for choice with about 100 naturally formed lakes that are under-utilised, he says.

Canard, 68, who has been kayaking since his late 30s, worries the lake will end up like Lake Dunstan at the head of the Clutha Dam - "dead".

"In my lifetime I've seen one river after another either getting diverted, drained or dammed. We've only got 20 per cent left. That's why the Mokihinui is important."