Neighbours Stop Scheme’s Access to National Grid
By GALE,Hayley
A Golden Bay resident has built a new hydro-electric power scheme on the Rameka Creek which has the capacity to provide enough power for up to 15 houses.
But the scheme’s creator, Steve Zelco, says it is not running to capacity because neighbours have declined to grant him access to the national grid through their land.
“We would have donated a good percentage of the profits to Forest and Bird but this was still not enough for the neighbours to give access,” Mr Zelco said.
He declined to reveal how much the scheme had cost but added that he was “now looking at other ways of putting the electricity to good use so as not to waste the resource”.
He and his wife Maria moved to their 120ha property at the top of Rameka Creek Rd, Golden Bay eight years ago to “live a private life”. Originally from Croatia, the couple emigrated to Canada in 1969 before coming to New Zealand.
A serious concern about global warming and a desire to be self- sufficient prompted their interest in building a hydro-electric power scheme.
They obtained resource consent from the Tasman District Council to build it, a process which involved obtaining environmental impact reports from the Cawthorn Institute and the Institute of Nuclear and Geological Sciences in Wellington and consulting the Department of Conservation.
“Their assessments concluded that the impact was negligible.”
The water intake from the Rameka Valley is channelled 850m underground to a small power station which currently generates 65 kilowatts of electricity.
Electricity pylons have been placed down the valley and then 350m up a steep mountain to the couple’s home on the top.
Up to 50 percent of the water in the stream is taken for the scheme before it is channelled back into the creek just below the power station.
“We did most of the work ourselves and did everything we could to make it blend into nature as far as possible.”
Mr Zelco said he regretted the loss of three mature matai trees and a few beech trees in the valley to make way for the scheme, but pointed out that all the proceeds from the sale of the wood was donated to the fund for a new defibrillator for the Golden Bay Medical Centre.
“We have been mindful not to impact the environment. We’ve planted 12,000 trees in the first phase of the regeneration of our land and we control invasive weed species.”
Mr Zelco believes that a multiplicity of small-scale projects such as his are a more viable alternative for the future than large- scale power generation schemes.
“We need to be respectful of what we have inherited and use it judiciously. We’re not blundering in and taking as much as we can get away with,” he said.”
A key neighbour, Toni Bischof, declined to comment.
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