The Greens are preparing to oppose plans to include a national interest clause in the Resource Management Act (RMA).
Co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons told the party's annual conference she was worried about Government plans to change the act to balance national benefits of projects with local costs.
Last month FinanceMinister Michael Cullen told a business audience that national benefits of projects should be weighed against local costs in the RMA, and said he hoped a bill amending the law would be introduced in Parliament in September.
"There is no need for the act to be silent on such matters, and I am confident we can find a way of expressing some straightforward principles in this regard," he said.
The law has been hammered by opposition parties and business lobbyists for halting and delaying infrastructure projects like Meridian Energy's $1.2 billion Aqua power project on the Waitaki River.
But Ms Fitzsimons said the national interest clauses could be a big threat to the environment and public participation.
Labour did not want the RMA gutted like National and Act to allow developers a "six-lane highway to do what they want", but the plan for national interest to be taken account in projects was worrying.
She said that was similar to the approach used to push "Think Big" type projects through under the now-repealed National Development Act.
"It means we will get a duplication of the national grid instead of distributed generation.
"It means Project Aquas rather than 10 wind plants spread around the country serving the same purpose. "It means we will get bigger motorways carved through cities, rather than better public transport," she said.
Ms Fitzsimons said Meridian's Te Apiti windfarm gained consent in a week but Project Aqua would have taken two years to get consent.
"The act is working. It's letting the sensible, constructive, supported and environmentally sane projects through reasonably quickly and it's putting blockages in the way of the silly ones."
Ms Fitzsimons told the Herald the Greens would oppose anything that looked like a rerun of the National Development Act.
