Power to people where it's needed

By SIMON COLLINS

A small Maori community's 50-year dream of restoring its own power plant may be about to come true, thanks to new science funding priorities.

Waihi Village, a settlement of a dozen families at the southwest corner of Lake Taupo, had its own hydro power plant supporting a dairy factory and a sawmill from the 1920s until 1958, when the plant was replaced by a connection to the national grid.

Now the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology has agreed to fund a feasibility assessment on reopening the abandoned plant and making use of the hot geothermal water that dissipates into Taupo's cold waters.

It is part of a study led by the Maori unit of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) that will also look at harnessing wind and wave power in remote Maori communities in the Far North.

Napa Otimi, who chairs the Waihi Marae Committee, said elders had been agitating to get their power station back since it was closed.

Waihi is the traditional home of the ariki, or paramount chief, of the Tuwharetoa people - these days Tumu Te Heuheu.

It has been badly affected by a natural subsidence of the land in the volcanically active Tokaanu area, which has dropped by an average of 2mm a year for 2000 years and plunged by 30mm between December 1999 and March last year. Geothermal springs at Waihi which were once used for cooking are now below the lake level.

Early in the 20th century, a weir was built above a waterfall that drops spectacularly over a clifftop into a stream just behind the village. A totara pipe from the weir brought water to a small 30-kilowatt power station, the ruins of which stand today.

At various times, the building was also used as a dairy factory and a sawmill, with timber loaded out by boat. The village supported hundreds of people.

"We were self-sustaining. We want that back," Mr Otimi said. "One of the key reasons for developing this power station is to give us a sound foundation to look at things like flax farms or hothouses.

"Families went away and are now looking at coming home. Coming home to what? We say this will provide the basis of some economic development and housing development.

"The key issue for us is that it's sustainable and its impact on the environment will be negligible."

Waihi is still the busiest marae in the Tuwharetoa district, hosting many regional and national hui. When a hui is on, its 30 houses quickly fill up, and many sleep in the marae buildings.

Niwa's Maori research manager, Dr Charlotte Severne, said this gave the village an unusual pattern of energy use.

"If we could come up with the right sort of energy solutions for them, we could possibly divert a lot of generation capacity into them during peak loads," she said.

Dr Severne grew up in nearby Tokaanu and did her doctoral thesis on the Waihi geothermal field. She worked with the community on a voluntary basis while based at the Ministry for the Environment in Wellington, before joining Niwa.

"That's the difference between other researchers and Maori researchers - you have your family around you all the time, you do things like this," she said. "This has come together because the foundation has a target outcome for Maori development, and because the people are proactive."

The marae committee will match the foundation's grant dollar for dollar.

The grant is under its "new and emerging energy technologies" category. Funding in this category jumped 28 per cent to $5 million this year because of the Government's policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.