Philippa Stevenson: Dark power of the merciless behemoths

COMMENT

It's a plot worthy of Sauron. Style a country on a fantastic and mythical Middle-earth complete with the sylvan home of cute, walking, warm fuzzies and then, just as people come flocking to witness the wonder (and dispense their wealth), foul it.

Through some of its most idyllic scenery, across rivers and streams, rolling green hills, beside remote farmhouses and small villages, march a regiment of merciless, iron behemoths whose single, mindless task is to wield power over the land.

Wow, if the evil dude to beat all evil dudes had thought of it he would've given up on using minor bits of jewellery to cause chaos aeons ago.

Send in the pylons, the tyrant would've said and then sat back in Mordor to eye the mayhem.

Twin towers. Ha! The Lord of the Dark Tower didn't get his name by thinking small. From deep in the Mines of Moria a corrupt cackle would have echoed his edict.

Think big. Let there be 200km of towers. And make 'em dominant. At least 70m tall. Chuck 'em around liberally, about 400m apart, with great threads of thick wire crackling and humming between them.

And never mind the poor schmucks living beneath. To get power to the people all this beauty will have to die.

Well, Tolkien never thought of this particular scenario but out in the middle of Middle Earth, aka the Central North Island, state-owned national grid operator Transpower has rapidly assumed Sauronian status.

Its plans for a $500 million addition to its transmission network has roused and riled people from sleepy hamlets the length of the proposed 400Kv line from Whakamaru to Otahuhu.

Farmers, lifestylers, small towns and whole districts have protested against the plan at meetings this month and not just in knee-jerk, nimby fashion. Sure, they don't want it in their backyards but they also question its necessity in anyone's.

To them, it looks like transmission for transmission's sake and not a strand of a long-term solution to keep the home fires burning and the telly, computer, oven, microwave, washing machine, dryer and electric blanket functioning well into the country's future.

They were undoubtedly given encouragement at the weekend when some heavyweights at the Sustainable Energy Forum joined the debate.

Like some grey, caped Gandalf, the Parliamentary Commission for the Environment urged the body that will decide whether the line goes ahead - the Electricity Commission - to consider more than "net market benefit".

Commissioner Morgan Williams said that to be consistent with Government policy, electricity decisions should promote "efficient investment in transmission or transmission alternatives".

And out there, in the land, a small, ragtag fellowship has formed with plans to use the power of its adversary to fight back.

Transpower has months of planning and a $1.5 billion war chest behind it, and ahead of it, "requiring authority" status under the Resource Management Act. That allows it to "require" local authorities to designate land for its transmission lines.

The fellowship, meanwhile, is ill prepared, penniless and far flung but not, it believes, helpless. One spokesman, Bob McQueen of rural Te Miro, hopes it can unite a considerable force against its foe with the help of technology.

Hold the swords, the catapults and boiling oil, this may be the country's first war of the web sites.

In just a week of burning the midnight oil, the fellowship has launched notowers.co.nz. Already up and running is Transpower's gridupgrade.co.nz.

It helps that McQueen is a professor of electronic commerce technology who has researched the powers and benefits of cyber communities, and a neighbouring Te Miro resident is Kate Brennan whose lifestyleblock.co.nz is an example of isolated people in distant locations bonding in cyberspace. Brennan will run the site.

McQueen says notowers will not take the place of community hall meetings or placard-waving protests but can be a rallying and contact point, a place where information can be disseminated and discussed, and where a ribbon of real settlement can become a compact virtual community.

Farmer and former MP Rob Storey, whose Waiterimu farm is already crisscrossed by unsightly transmission lines, has high hopes the e-community will do more than raise its voice over the proposed new line.

The notowers website was launched last week and though professional in appearance is, as yet, light on content and clearly a work in progress.

Gridupgrade, however, bristles with faqs, reports, timelines and maps.

But might, as we all know, if only in a fictional sense, does not always triumph.

I detected something stirring deep within gridupgrade when I surfed the site. Every time I tried to read a report my computer crashed.

* Email Philippa Stevenson

No Towers

National Grid Upgrade

The Electricity Commission