News last week that New Zealand’s biggest wind farm will be built across the harbour at Te Akau – stretching 34 kilometres along the isolated northern coastline to Port Waikato – has met with disappointment but not surprise by Raglan opponents, who say that stopping the development was always a “long shot”.
Raglan academic and activist Angeline Greensill points out the Government changed the law to “accommodate these things”, making the 168-turbine project extremely difficult to halt, while Manu Bay environmentalist and eco retreat operator Phil McCabe says not enough locals protested about Contact Energy’s application to industrialise a pristine landscape. It was always a long shot to try to fight the wind farm, says Phil, who believes the whole process was heavily weighted toward the applicant. He describes the end result – the Environment Ministry’s announcement late last week that final resource consent had been granted – as predictable “given the small number of locals who actually spoke up”. Angeline – daughter of the late Maori land rights campaigner Eva Rickard – agrees people didn’t protest enough and fears the development now sets a precedent for wind farms all along the west coast when overseas, she says, the trend has turned to wind farms in the ocean. Whale Bay wind farm opponent and Raglan Point Boardriders’ president Reuben Brown, who tried last year along with Phil to rally more support for submissions against the massive wind farm, is now also
reluctantly resigned to its inevitability. He says he’s “over it” and that “you can’t stop something already in motion”. The Hauauru Ma Raki (northwest wind) development will be six times the size of the recently opened Te Uku wind farm, which in itself was one of Waikato’s biggest engineering projects in decades and attracted a lot of initial protest from the community. While a board of inquiry conducted hearings into the Te Akau proposal, they were seen largely as a charade since the Government had earlier called in – or fasttracked – the project in recognition of its “national significance”. But while the wind farm will produce up to 504 megawatts of electricity – enough for 170,000 homes – Angeline insists we as New Zealanders have enough power for our needs and should be more conscious of energy usage rather than “destroying our cultural heritage”. The coastal landscape soon to be industrialised with red lights flashing at night, she laments, will become the norm for her grandchildren growing up in Raglan – an area “full of our history, politics and culture”. Destruction of Raglan’s cultural landscape is her greatest concern. Cultural heritage is a “finite resource”, she says, unlike a tap that never runs out of water. She already has a case against the Historic Places Trust, which she claims has in part allowed the destruction of many archaeological sites for the new wind farm across the harbour. Angeline also points out that many turbines – at 150 metres or one-and-a-half football fields high – will be built on the
ridges that served as pathways to Auckland for runners delivering the mail in past eras. More recently, she says, the “interesting” limestone landscape at Te Akau set the scene for some Lord of the Rings movie shoots. Contact Energy won preliminary consent for Hauauru Ma Raki in February. The Australian-owned company reduced its application from 180 to 168 turbines as part of environmental considerations during the hearing process, which was begun in May 2009 but adjourned for 12 months and then completed last year. The Environment Ministry says limits on operating noise have been included in the resource consent, plus a number of conditions to protect the local environment. Waikato district mayor Allan Sanson says while he accepts not everyone in the area will welcome it, wind power is a better alternative to using fossil fuels. Phil McCabe however remains cynical at what he sees as the corporate takeover of the Raglan community, and reckons – tongue in cheek – that the Waikato District Council should seek reimbursement from Contact for providing two “very nice” wind farm viewing areas in the form of the recently-developed Wainui and Manu Bay reserves. Phil, who was part of the recent highprofile protest against Petrobras activity off the East Cape, warns the next danger is further deepwater oil exploration off our coast in a few months and urges a “unified stand” by the whole community to diffuse the threat of imminent seabed mining. Edith Symes
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