A Waimate District Council community survey from November 5-19 sought public opinion on the Project Kea waste-to-energy plant proposed for Glenavy.
The Waimate District Council Let’s Chat engagement platform in 13 days received 735 responses overall, Mayor Craig Rowley said.
Feelings regarding the proposed plant were overwhelmingly negative, 697 saying no.
Only 28 said yes and another 10 could not say either way.
Mr Rowley said the survey was to gauge sentiment in the district.
The council would include the results in any submission it made on Project Kea to the fast-track projects panel, "should the panel provide the opportunity".
He said the latest survey was the first Waimate had conducted using a new online survey platform.
"I thought it was a good responsive snapshot of the community and I thought the numbers were fairly good for a council survey.
"We normally only get 200-300 for a council survey."
However, the online method had been a challenge for some district residents, particularly those in the older age bracket.
As a result, he and a group of councillors sat at Waimate’s community market last weekend and manually recorded responses from about 50 district residents.
The feedback there mirrored what had come through online.
"The for and against was pretty much what we got when we sat down at the community market last Saturday."
Mr Rowley said the negative response also almost mirrored another survey done in the community, by Why Waste Waitaki.
That had garnered about 3800 responses and largely reflected the proportion of those for and against under the district council’s survey.
Last week the council wrote to the coalition government asking it to take South Island Resource Recovery Ltd’s (SIRRL) Project Kea off its list of approved Fast-track Approvals Bill projects.
As yet there had been no response.
However, the council would be keeping a close eye on the process as the Bill proceeded at which stage the council would have a clearer picture of what it might do, Mr Rowley said.
The letter said the assessment of environmental effects for Project Kea was "inadequate".
It also said the Waimate District Council was not confident the fast-track process would address "significant information gaps" in the original Project Kea application. Because of that the council said it could not support the project.
SIRRL director Paul Taylor, in a statement last Friday responding to the call for Project Kea to be removed from the fast-track process, noted both the Waimate District Council and Environment Canterbury had accepted the Project Kea consent application for processing.
Since the project had been added to the fast-track process, the company had been gathering further information.
It would be sharing that with the council, the Waimate community and others "as soon as there is more information to share", Mr Taylor said.
