South Island Resource Recovery Ltd (SIRRL) director Paul Taylor announced yesterday in a statement it had lost the land for what would be New Zealand’s first waste-to-energy plant.
"The sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms near Glenavy to build an Energy-from-Waste plant [Project Kea] lapsed at the end of last year.
"We will continue to focus on lodging our application with the fast track panel and they will assess our application and judge it on its merits."
SIRRL was granted consent to buy the 14.85ha piece of land by the the Overseas Investment Office in May last year.
Bruce Murphy, of Murphy Farms, said the project no longer met their plans for growth "due to the delays resulting from changes made to the consenting process through the introduction of the Fast-track Approvals Act".
"As a result, we have not renewed the sales and purchase agreement with SIRRL."
Project Kea is one of 149 projects included in the government’s Fast-track Approvals Act, which was passed into law in December.
Waimate District Mayor Craig Rowley said the announcement "wasn’t unexpected".
"There’s been so much negative press from the community around the proposal that it didn’t surprise that the land offer has been withdrawn."
The Waimate District Council conducted a survey late last year that received almost 700 responses against the idea of the plant with only 28 in favour of it.
Mr Rowley said there were also concerns about the logistics of the site.
"We were concerned about the traffic movements if this project had gone ahead with 60-plus additional traffic movements a day with trucks and things like that, so it was always a question that was left unanswered for me."
He penned a letter to the government in November asking them to remove Project Kea from the fast-track process.
He has not had any response yet.
In terms of next steps, there was not a lot for the council to do.
"If [SIRRL] continue to lodge the consent, we’ll go through the process. It’s just a wait and see game now."
