KEY POINTS:
Transpower faces growing calls from Auckland councils and community groups to bury high-voltage electricity lines under new or existing roads through high-density population centres.
A Government-appointed board of inquiry was urged yesterday to recommend that Transpower be required to use motorways and arterial roads as urban utility corridors.
The board of inquiry is in Auckland to hear submissions on a proposed national policy statement to elevate the importance of electricity transmission in district and regional planning documents.
Auckland City works and services chairman Neil Abel said he was alarmed that an opportunity for Transpower to lay ducting for future high-voltage lines under motorway projects on the western ring route between Manukau and Albany was being ignored.
He and council staff expressed concern that a narrow focus of the proposed policy statement on the efficiency of power supply - coupled with tight grid investment rules enforced by the Electricity Commission - may make Auckland City's aim of having transmission lines buried wherever possible "unattainable on economic grounds".
Council utilities manager Des Hughes, a former senior government electricity official, said: "Underground lines would prove their worth in the long run by being easier to maintain and less vulnerable to economic-crippling supply disruption."
As well as ultimately allowing the removal of transmission lines which were "a blight on the horizon" of landmarks such as Onehunga Bay, they could be upgraded without costly property purchases and growing community concerns about potential health problems from enlarged electro-magnetic fields.
They would be buried in trenches 2m to 2.5m deep, and enclosed in concrete blocks. Lines company Vector receives $10.5 million a year from the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust to bury parts of its own distribution network, but Mr Hughes said Transpower's higher-voltage lines were seen as having "probably more health effects".
He noted that a proposal by Transpower to increase electricity current along 220,000-volt overhead lines through Onehunga to Henderson, which is being considered by Auckland City planning commissioners after a hearing this month, was opposed by at least 430 submissions.
As well as taking advantage of "greenfield situations" such as Transit NZ's motorway projects through Onehunga and Mt Roskill, he invited Transpower to make use of arterial routes such as Waipuna Rd in Mt Wellington to bury lines in a proposed upgrade of its critical electricity link between Pakuranga and Panmure.
Submissions from both the city and Auckland Regional Council noted a precedent set by Transpower in using Transit's Northern Busway project to lay ducts for a future direct underground link between Penrose and Albany, via the harbour bridge, costing more than $300 million.
Transpower is contributing $24 million to the busway project for that purpose, and has already laid ducts under Fanshawe St from the northern end of Vector's $70 million tunnel between Penrose and central Auckland.
But Mr Abel said he understood Transpower declined an invitation to help to pay for the tunnel when it was built in 1998, and it had yet to negotiate an access deal with Vector.
Auckland Regional Council policy implementation manager Duane Burtt said secure electricity supply was a prerequisite but there was an imbalance in the proposed national policy, with "little attention to the environmental effects of transmission".
Council architectural consultant Kevin Brewer said the Auckland growth strategy should be included in the policy statement as a matter of national importance to require Transpower to take account of areas designated for high-density development. Notable examples were Flat Bush and Massey North, which were already traversed by overhead lines.
Maungakiekie Community Board chairwoman Bridget Graham said the proposed statement appeared to disregard the rights of people who lived, worked, played on or owned property near the three sets of transmission lines running through Onehunga, including those supported by a row of pylons "marching" through its bay.
Federated Farmers Auckland president Phil York said the proposal "screws the scrum" far too much in Transpower's favour in the name of the national interest but against local and private interests.
The three-member board of inquiry, chaired by retired High Court judge Peter Salmon, will continue its hearing today at the Aotea Centre.
