Water exports closer

Press, 24 March 1984, Page 1

Water exports closer

PA Wellington Plans by an American company to export water from Doubtful Sound would have little effect on the Fiordland environment, according to an environmental impact report prepared for the company. Triune Resources wants to pump water from the Deep Cove tailrace of the Manapouri power station and transfer it by pipeline to tankers moored at the head of Doubtful Sound. The plan was first mooted in 1971 by another company but no big consignments of packaged water were made. The project aims to use some of the excess oil

tanker capacity that exists to ship water, most likely to the Middle East and the west coast of the United States. The report, for Oklahomabased Triune Resources Corporation, was done by John Bamford Associates, of Nelson. It will now go to the Commission for the Environment, which will make an audit after considering public submissions and then report to the Government on the proposal. Triune expected that loading would take up to 12 hours. During that period the tanker crew would not be permitted to disembark, and the vessel would be

required to leave as soon as loading was finished, unless adverse weather prohibited it Frequency of shipping would depend on demand, but Triune’s discussions with potential clients had indicated that one vessel would call each fortnight, increasing over a few years to five or more tankers a week. The environmental impact report concluded that the project would make little impact on the Doubtful Sound area, which is part of the Fiordland National Park. The possibility of interference with rock lobster fishing in the area would be

minimal, the report said. The park’s features would not be physically altered, but noise levels in the cove would inevitably rise. It has been proposed that tankers would moor during daylight hours so that “clangs and bangs associated with connecting and disconnecting the pipeline tail-end pieces should only be heard during daylight hours.” Triune had said that it would install high-quality silencers on the pumping barge, accommodation barge generators, and in its vessels. The possibility of a shipping accident involving oil spillage in the sound was

thoroughly explored in the report, but the commission concluded that there was little likelihood of significant environmental damage occurring. As ships would be moving very slowly and infrequently, the chance of a collision was minimal. Any oil slick would damage seaweeds, snails, and other small creatures along the shore, but these were likely to recover within a year, the report said. Few aquatic birds would be affected as seabird numbers in Deep Cove were low. If a spillage occurred in the vicinity of the Fiordland penguin colony, however, mortality could be high.