The Lake Dunstan Charitable Trust is happy with revised resource consent conditions Contract Energy must focus on around its Clyde Hydro Scheme, chairman Duncan Faulkner says.

The recent consents review and subsequent new conditions provide a revised focus on Contact Energy managing public amenities along the Kawarau Arm of Lake Dunstan, specifically addressing the effects its power generation has caused upstream.

Duncan said the trust requested the review, and was happy to have been listened to and to work alongside Contact Energy to review the previous conditions, which he said were “very, very lax”.

The narrow scope review of the consent conditions was focused on Contact Energy’s Landscape and Visual Amenity Management Plan (LVAMP), within the wider consent conditions.

Conditions included Contact Energy identifying actions to address landscape and visual amenity effects arising from its activities, including driftwood removal, terrestrial weed removal, planting and activities involving sediment excavation. 

Future LVAMPs must also include summaries of existing landscape attributes, river processes and geomorphology and changes and actions taken to maintain the landscape and visual amenities.

It was a good opportunity for Contact Energy to be the good neighbour it wanted to be, Duncan said.

“Thay have an opportunity to create a green energy source and also minimise the effects upstream.”

The new conditions addressed all the effects that were not previously noticeable, Duncan said.

“Silting has always been happening, but a lot was happening under the water level previously and now it is becoming noticeable and affecting use of the lake.”

Separately, Contact Energy lodged a resource consent application on May 8 for the dredging of sediment around the Bannockburn Inlet. It is yet to be determined if the application will be publicly notified.