Move for lower Clyde dam

Press, 27 October 1977, Page 7

Move for lower Clyde dam

PA Dunedin The Otago Catchment Board has recommended that the DG3 dam at Clyde be lowered, and that the Electricity Department be levied to provide funds for water; and soil development in the valley. The board was considering the recommendations it will make to the National Water and Soil Conservation Authority, which makes the final decision on the granting of Crown water rights sought for Clutha development.

The board said it did not feel it was allowed to make a recommendation on lowering the height of the dam. However, it decided it was allowed, under legislation, to recommend the maximum level which the lake could rise to — in effect the same thing. By a vote of 10-8 it recommended that the Crown application for a right for a dam 196.1 metres above sea level should be declined, but that a right should be granted for a maximum lake level of 160.6 metres above sea level. A lake of that height would save most of the prime land in the Cromwell Gorge, and would not flood Cromwell. The catchment board recommended unanimously that the Electricity Department be levied a percentage of gross revenue

from electricity generation in the Clutha Valley to provide a proportion of the fund for the valley’s development and irrigation.

The board has recommended that the department be granted a right to take 850 cumecs of water to generate electricity, subject to its making water available for irrigation and frost-fighting. This was agreed unanimously.

Also unanimously agreed were rights for taking and discharging up to 3200 cumecs for spillway surplus and flood water, and 1500 cumecs for emergency discharges, and that appropriate rights be granted for lowering the bed of the river between the proposed dam and Alexandra, and that the residual flow in that stretch of the river be not less than 100 cumecs.

The recommendations were formulated bv a special committee of'the board, and then ratified by the board.

The final decision on the granting pf rights will be made by the National Soil and Water Conservation Council, possibly in December, and this would be open to appeal unless the Government, as it can do at any stage, declares the river to be water of national importance.