LAKESIDE RESERVE Stay Order On Taupo Crown Lands

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31378, 25 May 1967, Page 1

LAKESIDE RESERVE Stay Order On Taupo Crown Lands

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, May 24.

The Government has placed a stay order on all Crown lands around the shore of Lake Taupo to prevent further development of land likely to be required for the proposed lakeside reserve.

The Minister of Lands and Forests

(Mr Maclntyre) announced this today when he attended a special meeting of the Taupo County Council to discuss the proposed reserve. At the same time Mr Maclntyre warned the council that compensation would have to be paid if a stay oxder was placed on privately-owned land.

Of the 38,000 acres required for the reserve, only 13,500 acres is Crown land. Several councillors asked Mr Maclntyre if the Government would give consideration to creating a reserve that took in not only land on the shore of the lake but land in the entire catchment area of the lake. Mr Maclntyre said a Cab-

inet committee which had been set up to consider the Lake Taupo reserve scheme would be meeting the Taupo County Council and Maori landowners affected by the scheme “in the very near future.”

Until then, he could disclose little information on what the Government planned to do about the reserve. “No Progress” The council expects the Government to pay for all pri-vately-owned land acquired for the reserve.

In a set of submissions presented to Mr Maclntyre, the council expressed concern that no apparent progress had been made towards the implementation of a report approved by the Government last October.

This report adopted preservation principles put forward by the council, and recommended the formation of a committee called the Taupo Basin Co-ordinating Committee to ensure liaison between Government departments and

local authorities, and to advise the Government on any steps necessary to maintain adherence to the policy of preservation. Appeal Board The council recommended that until the co-ordinating committee was constituted and functioning properly, a stay order should be placed over land required for the reserve to prevent undesirable use not in conformity with the general preservation policy. The council said if the proposed reserve areas were not properly investigated and defined, and shown as such on district planning schemes, local authorities would be placed in an almost untenable position when resisting appeals to the Town and Cour try Planning Appeal Board.