The Otago Regional Council's consent to extract gravel from the Shotover River, to help protect towns around Lake Wakatipu from flooding, has been upheld by the Environment Court.
In a decision released this week, Environment Court judge Gordon Whiting rejected Longshot Ltd's appeal against a resource consent granted in August last year.
The ORC was granted resource consent by itself and the Queenstown Lakes District Council to extract about 1.2 million cubic metres of gravel from the Shotover delta, at the confluence with the Kawarau River, to reduce obstructions to the drainage of Lake Wakatipu when it reaches flood level.
Judge Whiting said the works would not solve the flooding problem at Queenstown but would avoid it increasing in the future.
He reserved his decision on ORC's application to construct a training line to ensure that Shotover flows would enter the Kawarau River via the eastern side of the delta.
The ORC has 21 days from the decision to supply further evidence on the "choking effects" the training line would have on the Kawarau River.
"There will be adverse effects on the naturalness of the delta from the training line, and in our view they will not be entirely mitigated," he said.
"There is no doubt that the consents for gravel extraction should be upheld ... However, provided the aggregation of localised sediment does not create a choking effect, we see merit in the construction of a training wall," he said.
If consent was granted, the training line would be constructed along with a consented wall to protect the Queenstown Airport Corporation's runway end safety area and the Queenstown Lakes District Council's wastewater treatment facility Project Shotover.
The wall would be about 700m long and the training line would run about 400m from the wall into the delta.
