Currently, a one-in-five-year opportunity is open to change the consent.
Save Our Lake Dunstan and the Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust have said Contact Energy is not meeting its current obligations to the community and they want stricter conditions imposed on the electricity giant.
Contact Energy rejected those claims, saying it was taking its obligations seriously.
The company yesterday submitted an updated landscape and visual amenities management plan to the Otago Regional Council, setting out how it will manage its impact on the lake.
Lake Dunstan was born out of the Think Big era – which was formed when the Clyde Dam turned the Clutha River – Mata Au – and the Kawarau River that flows into it at Cromwell Junction into the reservoir it is now.
But silt that used to flow down from the Kawara River and further afield with Mata Au has been trapped and collected for three decades.
As a result, the Kawarau arm of Lake Dunstan is now a shallow, and sometimes smelly and dangerous mess.
Brendon Urlich, spokesman for Save Our Lake Dunstan, said this was far from what Cromwell had promised in 1992.
“It’s always been about ‘We’re putting in a dam, you’re losing a river, but you’ll get a great lakefront, you’ll get recreational use from swimming to boating to fishing and everything else’ and in a very short period of time ‘ which has been fairly taken away and no one is taking responsibility for maintaining it. “
According to Urlich, it’s simple – Contact Energy operates the dam and maintains the permit created by the lake, and it should be their responsibility to maintain it.
The permission required Contact to manage the landscape and visual comfort of the Kawarau arm.
But that condition needs to be strengthened, Urlich said.
“Number one – Contact must do what they have to do now, what they do not do. They do not maintain access to the lake, they do not clean it as they should do, they spend the minimum regarding what we look for and which we as the local community enjoy, ”he said.
Long list of frustrations
The resource permit allowed the Otago Regional Council a five-month window every five years to notify Contact of its intention to review conditions, specifically citing sediment build-up in the Kawarau arm.
That window is now open.
Duncan Faulkner, chairman of Urlich and Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust, wants the council to exercise that right and not miss the opportunity for another five years.
Faulkner said Cromwell’s residents feel let down by Contact.
“They are frustrated with the sludge, they are frustrated with the lack of planning around the sludge, they are frustrated with the lack of transparency about what options are available to manage the sludge, they are frustrated with the lagarosiphone, they’re frustrated with the lack of convenience values. “
Contact has not fulfilled its obligations as a corporate citizen in the community, he said.
“We made it very clear and we invite them to adapt to the community’s expectations. Introduce the people and the land to the profits,” Faulkner said.
Earlier this year, Contact Energy announced a half-year profit of $ 134 million.
The company can clearly do more to maintain the lake, Faulkner said.
He wrote to the Otago Regional Council requesting permission to be reviewed.
“All the trustees are of the same opinion that the current conditions are not being met and that the current conditions that are in place are not appropriate,” he said.
Anna Harrison, chairwoman of the Cromwell Community Council, said she was told the intention was always that the Kawarau arm should become a braided river.
She did not live in Cromwell when the lake was formed, but she realized that many who were did not share the view that a braided river was always his ultimate destiny.
Whatever happened, it must remain useful to the community, she said.
The community council had no decision-making power over the lake, but its role was to ensure that the community’s expectations were heard.
“There needs to be further lobbying – OK, this may be a braided river, but how do we make sure it’s not a muddy mess. A stinking mess that attracts weeds and stumps that makes it unattractive and unusable to our community, said Harrison.
Regional Council considers options
Richard Saunders, general manager of regulation and communications at the Otago Regional Council, said the council had received the request to formally review the permit conditions.
“No decision has been made. Staff are still considering whether to start a formal review of the permit conditions,” he said.
Boyd Brinsdon, head of Contact Energy’s hydro generation, said the decision was for the council, but if followed, Contact would work with ORC to investigate what it would look like.
“We take our obligations to the community very seriously, in the form of both mitigating adverse effects of our generational activities and overall good corporate behavior.”
Brinsdon pointed to Contact’s driftwood removal, multi-bed monitoring, access for water surveys, safety signs, archaeological monitoring, management of the multi-bed levels at Bannockburn and Lowburn, and their financial contribution to the removal of lagarosiphon weeds as examples.
The company also sponsored community events and facilities, he said.
“We take our permit obligations incredibly seriously. Contact’s obligations are to mitigate the adverse effects of our generational activities on Lake Dunstan and the wider Clutha catchment area,” Brinsdon said.
“The reality is that the multi-bed has changed and will continue to change and the condition of consent that the [Landscape and Visual Amenity Management Plan] plan reflects that contingency. This shift of multi – beds, sediment and water flow was envisaged and formed part of the expectations set when the dam was built, and was well incorporated during the permit renewal process between 2001 and 2007.
“In some specific situations sludge dredging may be an appropriate form of mitigation, in fact we have undertaken dredging activities at Lowburn and Bannockburn inlets. In the long run, however, continued dredging of sludge may not be the solution we are all looking for. not at. ” for.”