The newly formed Malaghans Valley Protection Society yesterday voiced its concerns over consortium Coronet Village Ltd’s (CVL) proposed fast-track development at the foothills of Coronet Peak.
It includes a new gondola, linking to the Coronet skifield, 780 homes, a commercial centre, private schools and between 600 and 800 carparks on rural-zoned land, which includes outstanding natural landscape.
Central to the society’s concerns was the potential environmental impact on Lake Hayes.
Society chairman James Hall said there had been a concerted effort from environmental and community groups over many years to restore the lake’s health — a key part of that was ensuring sediment runoff did not flow into the lake from the upper catchment, Pukunui, which bordered the proposed development, and Pukuiti, which was also nearby.
"Obviously, we want to look after the valley", he said.
"It’s just not up to that scale of development — it can’t substantiate it from an infrastructural point of view; sewerage, water, power, roading, the whole nine yards."
Mr Hall said the development proposed was "essentially a new town", which would be bigger than nearby Arthurs Point, and he believed it should be subject to full community consultation.
As part of the government’s new Fast-track Approvals Bill, directly affected parties and councils would have 10 days to submit on a proposal as it neared the end of the process, he said.
"There are no meaningful opportunities to be involved in the decision-making.
"We are trying to voice our concerns and get ahead of the publicly excluded process."
However, CVL sole director and shareholder Ben Farrell, of Queenstown, said the present application was only for the project to be included on the government’s "Schedule 2A" list.
Under that process, an advisory group, which had been established, was to provide a final recommendation report to ministers on which projects should be included in that list.
Ministers would then make final decisions on the list, proposed for inclusion in the Bill.
Once the Bill was enacted, those projects would be able to apply directly to an expert panel for consent.
Mr Farrell said there was no requirement for any project to be "shovel-ready", which allowed time, should CVL’s be included, to engage with the public.
"It doesn’t have to be this 10-day process [at the final stage], which I think is probably driving some concerns."
Mr Drury, who worked on the gondola proposal with Te Tapu O Tane pou turaka (chief executive) Jana Davis, said the consortium intended to have a public meeting if the proposal progressed.
"Certainly, we don’t want to push anything through that the community doesn’t want.
"Our plan, once we know what’s happening, [is to] have a public meeting, just to say, ‘this is where we’re at; this is what we’re doing’.
"It’s good that we’ve got the community engaged with this, and we’re certainly not of a mind to ram anything through."
While he and Mr Davis were looking at the potential for a new gondola, they found out neighbouring landowners had a similar thought, so formed the consortium and spoke to some stakeholders, including NZSki, Mr Drury said.
They hoped to hear back from the government within the next six weeks, after which, "we hope there’d be a dialogue that we could have with everybody".
