THE BORE WARS: Was it all worth it?

Christina Gardiner prefers to believe changes at Whakarewarewa Village are due to Mother Nature rather than bore closures 20 years ago.

Scientists from Geological and Nuclear Sciences are keen to set the record straight to help in any future development of the country's geothermal resources.

They plan to find out if officials were right to order the closure of some of Rotorua's bores in the late 1980s to try to revive the city's then declining geothermal features at Whakarewarewa.

Mrs Gardiner has lived in Whakarewarewa village for 44 years and was there for the highly controversial "bore wars" which resulted in arrests and protests as some bore owners sought to stop the closures.

More than 300 bores within a 1.5km radius of the declining Whakarewarewa geysers were gradually closed down in 1987 and 1988.

Whakarewarewa villagers were upset at the time because their Marae dining room had to change from geothermal energy to cooking with gas and electricity.



"It really upset the people because it took our right away for the dining room."

Residents got around it by using their own domestic steamboxes for cooking for large groups and got used to gas and electricity.





Mrs Gardiner collected water from nearby boiling pools and cooked her food in them or steam boxes.

She also uses communal baths in the village every day.

Her way of life has never changed but some things have since the bore closures.

It used to take up to three hours to cook a chicken in the village's five steamboxes.

Since the bore closures one of the bores became so hot it cooked a chicken in about an hour-and-a-half and sometimes blew the heavy wooden steam box lid off.

"We just say Mother Earth's having an adrenaline rush or having a hot flush."

The Waikorua pool in the village, closed in January 1976 because water levels dwindled to just a few inches and the ground collapsed, appeared to be in revival mode, Mrs Gardiner said.

In the last few years the water had been rising although she said it would never again be a pool because of the unstable ground.

Mrs Gardiner said mud pools in the village were also making a comeback and the Pohutu Geyser over the fence at Te Puia had become regularly active again in the last five years.

While she liked to believe the changes were due to Mother Nature, Mrs Gardiner acknowledged the bore closures may have played a part.

Even though the decline of the Whakarewarewa geysers has stopped, most which disappeared before 1987 have not recovered.

GNS Science geothermal programme leader Ed Mroczek said scientists would look at what happened during the bore closures to try to understand what had happened since.

He said it was important to learn from mistakes so other areas where geysers had not declined, such as Taupo and Wairakei, could be developed to increase power production from geothermal resources.

Two years ago Environment Bay of Plenty decided to review the world-leading recovery plan that closed the bores in Rotorua and consider opening up the geothermal field for increased use.

Mr Mroczek said there was the potential to develop geothermal energy in Central North Island geothermal fields and create power stations.

However, each site had to be thoroughly analysed to make sure what happened at Whakarewarewa did not happen in other areas.