With the community starting to ask questions and initial findings due from government, the Teviot Valley Community Board will soon assess how a group could be formed to discuss social impacts of the NZ Battery Project at Lake Onslow.

The Board yesterday discussed ways of preparing for community engagement with the Ministry of

Business, Innovation and Employment(MBIE) on the possible pumped-hydro project.

Board chairman Raymond Gunn, who is also on MBIE’s technical advisory group for the project, told the board he had recently attended a gathering in Wellington and had discussed community input.

He had also been learning more about the significant size of the project. “The more I’ve learnt about it the more blown away I am by the scale of it.”

The project could affect council’s spatial planning for the area which was another reason the Board would be looking into ways the community could come together to discuss impacts.

Board member Norman Dalley said the Board should act sooner rather than later to drive the unification of the community over the proposal.

“There has to be some momentum created. I don’t think we can just sit back and let time pass and not form a group.”

This month the government will review initial findings from scientific and other studies undertaken during past months. They would then refine where the focus should be for the second stage of the $30M feasibility study, according to a MBIE spokesperson.

The results of recent drilling work and the environmental cost involved in the build, will not be assessed until the end of the year, but preliminary ideas on how and where the dam and tunnels might be built are expected this month.

The project aims to guarantee a ‘greener’ power supply year-round, even in very dry years, although there would be no guarantee of cheaper power prices. There are predictions of a four-year build with 3000 direct jobs created.

The government is also looking at other types of energy generation elsewhere but may decide not to pursue these further. Lake Onslow is by far the largest and would be New Zealand’s biggest hydro project ever, if it goes ahead.

MBIE say that at this stage they are engaging “directly with those affected by the Lake Onslow investigations, including landowners, mana whenua and councils.”

Engagement with the wider community would be considered as part of Phase 2 of the NZ Battery Project, should the pumped hydro scheme at Lake Onslow pass this first feasibility stage.

Rates hike less than thought

Teviot Valley rates are expected to increase by 5.2% when the new financial year begins, rather than 6.9 as earlier predicted. Reserves balances had altered and some errors had been present in the equations which had now been corrected, the Teviot Valley Community Board were told yesterday.

This is lower than the average increase for the district which was initially predicted at 7.7% but is yet to be finalised.

Average rates across the district increased by 6.7% last year and are predicted to go up around $7.4 to 7.5% this year and another 7.6% next year, bringing the total percentage

increase over three years to nearly $22%.

One factor effecting the new Teviot rate was the cost of the new Roxburgh pool which involved servicing a loan.