Smelter move to be contested
PA Wellington "The use of fast-track planning procedures, for the proposed Aramoana aluminfium smelter in Otago will be .contested in the Court of 1 Appeal. I Approval to bring the $650 [million project under the [National Development ;Act : was contained in an Order-;in-Council from the Gover-jnor-General, Sir David Beatjtie, gazetted on Tuesday. [ However, plans to contest !use of the Act were announced yesterday by the [Dunedin-based Coalition for [ (National Economic and Environmental Development in New Zealand. The coalition chairman, Mr R. L. Thomson, said there was significant evidence that the project was not in the [national interest, and that it [could complete planning pro[cedures; without using the I Act’s provisions. i “We will be serving notice | within three weeks to contest I use of the Act,” he said. i “It is obviously a can of [worms and difficult to ■ predict the outcome — the [dispute provisions. of the act • have never been used before.
“But we are not trying to waste time and we would not do it if we thought we would not win,” Mr Thomson said. The coalition would contest claims by the smelter developers; South Pacific Aluminium, that the project would earn $l5O million net in annual overseas funds, he said. Studies by an Otago University economist, Professor P. van Moeseke. and a Ministry of Works and Development scientist, Mr M. J. Ellis, “Suggest this overstates earnings by as much as 100 per cent.” Creation of 27,000 jobs 2000 during the site construction and 25,000 oh downstream industries — conflicted with claims of 6000 jobs by Professor van Moeseke, Mr Thomson said. Normal ; planning procedures would, allow cortipletion of construction before electricity' ' supplies ’ were available for the smelter. The coalition, formed in January, was budgeting up to $70,000 for the Court of Appeal hearing and a possible Planning Tribunal hearing, he said.
“We started soliciting funds about six weeks ago and are getting an average of $lOOO, a week,” Mr Thomson said. The plan to appeal fasttrack planning is the first since the National Development Act was passed in 1979. . Electricity' needed for the planned Aramoana aluminium smelter near Dunedin would bring energy planning forward by 10 years and make nuclear energy possible this century, said the Labour environment spokesman, Mr M. K. Moore yesterday. Mr Moore also said the Commissiori for the Environmentaudit on environmental impacts of the project should include social and human effects. “There is a real danger that the smelter will take so much power that many North. Island rivers will,need to be dammed to make up for the power loss,” he said. “That is the real crunch point of the decision to fasttrack the smelter • and one this Government has not even contemplated.
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Press, 30 April 1981, Page 6
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454Smelter move to be contested Press, 30 April 1981, Page 6
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