Decision to be made on Milford Sound options

Press, 29 January 1988, Page 26

Decision to be made on Milford Sound options

PA Invercargill The Department of Conservation is likely to choose between a gondola system and a minimumreclamation variation of the Tourist Hotel Corporation consortium plans for development in Milford Sound. In the weighty Milford Sound development options report prepared for the department by Mur-ray-North, Ltd, these options come off best in the areas of coastal processes, ecological systems, landscape and visual aspects, navigations and boat use and park policy. Option five, the gondola, at $25 million is by far the most expensive of the seven options considered, while the consortium variation plan, option three, is the cheapest at $l5 million. However, as the two systems work in quite different ways, the report includes a wider review

of these options for the D.O.C. to consider.

Option three retains the existing system at Milford while upgrading and expanding parking, linkage and facilities. Option five improves facilities and introduces a “people movement system” (gondola) which enables cars and buses to be kept out of freshwater basin, creating the ’’botanic garden” effect intended by the proposer, Peter Yeoman, of Payeo development. Both proposals require reclamation for an upgraded boat harbour, option three requiring more reclamation than option five. Option three requires additional reclamation for parking and landscaping in a modified area. Option five cuts more bush. Neither option would solve all the problems perfectly, the report said.

“The Department of Conservation decision is ... Between additional impacts within freshwater

basin (option three) and additional cost, management and operational requirements (option five).” The report made a detailed assessment of seven development options for Milford Sound.

The first was the option put forward by a consortium of the Tourist Hotel Corporation, Fiordland Travel, Ltd, and the Queenstown Lakes District Council. This option required extensive land reclamation in freshwater basin to provide extra parking, visitor facilities and informal parks close to a large developed boat harbour in its existing position. Two more acceptable variations in the terms of ecology, landscape and design were prepared by the Murray-North team to form options two and three.

Option three is the preferred option being held out against the gondola proposal. It requires the

least reclamation, retains and expands the boat harbour in its present location and includes the plans for covered walkways, a new tourist centre and restaurant and bar of option one. The fourth, or ’’swing base” option, was designed by the Ministry of Works and Development in 1986 in response to a Lands and Survey brief which required that all facilities, including the boat harbour, be kept close together. This option shifted the harbour to a swing basin cut into freshwater basin and added a man-made peninsula, on which the visitors’ centre and restaurant would be sited.

Option four had the most effective planning and linkage scheme, but it created boat handling and navigational problems and too much environmental intervention.

Option five, the gondola option, had the least ef-

feet on the environment, but it costs the most. The report team were concerned at possible high maintenance costs, delays in building as it was a totally new system and the additional staff housing this option required.

Options six and seven were deepwater basin options, in which a boat harbour would be created there rather than in the present freshwater basin. Both were discarded in the report on grounds of navigational hazards and other risks.

All the options considered were able to take the required 4000-a-day design population, a number which the report team foresaw would accommodate demand over the next 15 years. However, the option chosen should be able to expand its capacities to 6000 a day past the turn of the century.