Have you noticed how sometimes things completely off your radar suddenly crop up as a problem and you wonder how did that happen, or how did I miss that. Like suddenly discovering that you have to pay for carparking at the Kerikeri airport and you don’t have any cash or time to understand the complexities of the parking machine before your flight goes.
Parliament is always passing some new law that adds complexity to life without us actually noticing it coming, so wise people try to scan the horizon regularly for things that might adversely impact us up here in the Far North.
We get so much consultation these days that one gets inured to the messages and some quite important things get through. Luckily for me I have always had business interests both here and elsewhere which coupled with being on a few boards of national organizations forces me to see trends from outside that many here might miss.
What this is leading me to, is one quite scary resource consent hearing that is taking place in Auckland soon which could have very adverse impacts on our lives up here and which no locals that I know have even seen, but which showed up in my board papers for Transpower, the country’s electricity transmission backbone.
Northland has only got the one main electricity supply feeder through Auckland and this has recently been upgraded to allow more power to be transmitted to Northland to meet the steadily increasing demand here. Due to one of the many quirks of the Resource Management Act (RMA) the Auckland City Council (ACC) have the right to consider whether these existing and recently upgraded power lines can operate at the newly designed figures of 220 KV or have to stay at the old rating of 110KV.
Nobody looking at these lines can tell what capacity they are running at or even if they are on at all, yet the ACC could actually limit the power to Northland at this hearing and nobody here even knows. This is because they only have to consult with neighbours, yet it is the consumers of Northland who need this increased capacity.
Accordingly the hearing will take place with no Northland support for Transpower’s upgrade to benefit Northland because the RMA system alerts the wrong people and we don’t have systems to ensure that our main organizations such as lines companies, major power users and councils get input on our behalf.
My hope is that this story will wake up those with responsibility for our needs and ensure that our voice is heard.
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