Fitzsimons Jeanette: General Debates 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: General Debates 
[Volume:618;Page:14399] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 “Coming to a river near you!” Members might like to study this map to look at the orange dots in their electorates. Those 65 orange dots are the plans that the Ministry of Economic Development has for our rivers. Those 65 are only the publicly known opportunities to dam divert and put into canals. They are only the ones that the Ministry of Economic Development believes have a high-to-medium level of confidence of proceeding. Altogether they add up to over 12000 gigawatt hours which is nearly a third of the generation that New Zealand used last year. 
 They claim to have removed the projects with environmental issues that would be difficult to resolve and they claim to have removed projects in national parks. However quite a number of those are still illegal and require changes of the law before they could proceed. They rely on the lifting of water conservation orders that have been fought for by local communities often for a decade or so before they have finally been put in place. They propose the lifting of water conservation orders on the Ashburton River on the Mohaka River and on the Gowan River. They do affect national parks. They proposed to divert the Mangawhero River on the edge of the Tongariro National Park into the Wanganui River. They contain numerous examples in forest parks such as up in the Tararuas where many local Wellingtonians have their recreation and tramping. 
Two of the main rivers in Molesworth Station just acquired by the Department of Conservation for the benefit of all New Zealanders—the Awatere River currently running free and unmodified would be dammed and the Clarence River—would be diverted through a range of hills into a dam on the other side in a major tourist and recreational area. 
The examples are legion. There are four dams on the Ngaruroro River which currently has no dams on it. The East Cape the Bay of Plenty Gisborne and the Hawke’s Bay region is particularly affected. There is the Waiohine River a tributary of the Ruamahanga River with its headwaters in the Tararua Ranges; the Ashburton River which requires a variation to two water conservation orders with a proposal to divert waters from two catchments and run canals through the basin where  
The Lord of the Rings 
 was filmed—it would have looked great with canals in the background would it not—and the damming of the river at the gorge. 
There is a proposed diversion of the river draining Lake Koroko in the Fiordland National Park and diverting a discharge of Lake Wakatipu down into Southland. Chief amongst all these proposals of course is Project Aqua which is still on the books whose applications have not been withdrawn which provides the largest amount of power out of the 12000 gigawatt hours and with which it is clearly still aimed to proceed if a suitable regional plan can be drawn up under the Waitaki bill. 
All of these rivers have natural values that are important to New Zealanders. All of these rivers are habitat for biodiversity for indigenous species. All of these rivers have recreational and scenic values. They are people’s favourite fishing spots favourite swimming spots and favourite tramping places. The Ministry of Economic Development shows no sensitivity at all to those values. It is simply: “What is the hydro potential? Let’s go for it if we think we could get consent.” 
There is also a strong link here to the proposed amendment to the Resource Management Act in that the website refers to these rivers as water bodies of national importance. We know that one of the proposals to amend the Resource Management Act is to put a clause in allowing the national interest to override people’s local amenity interests and the environment and this is what that override will be for. This is what that national interest clause in the Resource Management Act will be about. There will be about 65 but there are a whole lot more to come that are perhaps a little less likely than these. These are just the most likely ones on rivers all over the country. 
All of this could be avoided. We have large opportunities in New Zealand for energy efficiency and conservation. We have the best wind sites in the world we have waste wood for co-generation and we have a lot of solar heat. All of those things are possible. We do not have to sacrifice rivers throughout the country.