The Queenstown Lakes District Council, Otago Regional Council and Queenstown Airport Corporation have entered into mediation talks after appeals against the consents to extract gravel and build a training line on the Shotover Delta.
Three appeals were heard in a pre-hearing conference in the Environment Court at Queenstown last week.
All parties agreed to enter into mediation talks, but if they failed to reach an agreement Judge Jon Jackson said he would order a timetable for a hearing, which would last two weeks.
Independent commissioners Trevor Shiels, Jeff Jones and Mike Bowden made their decision after a six-day resource consent hearing in Queenstown in February.
Extraction of up to 1,070,000cu m of gravel from the Shotover delta was granted for the Queenstown Airport Corporation's estimated $10 million runway end safety area project.
The corporation needs 700,000cu m for the 90m-long, 45m-high engineered fill on the western banks of the Shotover River to meet Civil Aviation Authority requirements.
The resource consent application is being appealed by Long Shot Ltd.
The ORC is also appealing the commissioners' decision to decline application for Shotover Delta flood protection work.
The 1km curved training line on the delta bed would redirect the river to its true left, to allow sediment to be flushed downstream instead of accumulating.
Commissioners granted the consents needed for the training line from the Queenstown Lakes District Council, but declined those needed from the ORC.
The airport and the ORC are also appealing some of the conditions imposed by the commissioners in relation to the gravel extraction.
