Waikato wind farm opponents checking legal options

Contact Energy's representation of the wind farm viewed from Port Waikato looking west towards the coast.

Opponents of Contact Energy's proposed $1 billion-plus wind farm in Waikato are considering legal action to force the power company back before a board looking at the application.

Contact won a year's adjournment to its application after deciding it had more work to do. This was after last year persuading the former Government it needed to get on with the project urgently and winning a fast track "call-in" planning hearing.

The power generator says the project is of national significanceand is the second-largest wind farm on the drawing board, behind Meridian's Project Hayes in Central Otago.

Now Contact's opponents, including Ross Townsend, a landowner in the wind farm zone near Raglan, are looking at their legal options.

"We're going to challenge them. They've buggered up their own position - halfway through their own evidence it falls over."

Contact has said it is determined to get the 180-turbine project approved, although timing of construction would depend on the economics of wind power which is affected by international prices of machinery.

Townsend, a former Affco chief executive, said he believed Contact would get sidetracked on other projects in the meantime and rethink the viability of wind.

"In a year's time this thing will quietly go away."

He said he was also lobbying Environment Minister Nick Smith about the call-in process approved by former minister Trevor Mallard which he said was a "kangaroo court".

"One of the things we need to do is to talk to the minister and see if we can't get him to abandon the call-in process."

The year-long delay would cause added anxiety for the opponents but also for the scheme's backers.

"People who are hosts to the wind turbines are not getting an income stream while this thing is delayed."

Wind turbine rental can add up to tens of thousands of dollars a unit.

A 25km transmission line would be needed to connect the wind farm to the main national grid system. Townsend said those "victims" of the transmission corridor would be paid significantly less in one-off payments than those with turbines on their farms who would receive an annual rental.

In its application for an urgent hearing last year Contact said the project was of national significance given it would generate up to 540MW of electricity from a renewable source and was close to the Auckland demand centre.