Beaumont and Tuapeka properties once earmarked for hydro development, with a rateable value today of about $11 million, will be sold over the next two or three years, Contact Energy announced yesterday.
The 57 properties, which cover more than 500ha, include the Beaumont Hotel and were bought in the 1990s for a possible hydro dam and power station.
Contact pulled the plug on plans for more dams on the upper and lower Clutha in May 2012 after reconsidering four hydro-development options, at Tuapeka Mouth, Beaumont, Queensberry and Luggate.
The dams were originally proposed more than 20 years ago by Contact's predecessor, the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand, but the company confirmed two years ago it had withdrawn from those plans.
Most of the Beaumont and Tuapeka land for sale was farmland, with ''quite a few'' smaller rural blocks of about 2ha-10ha in size, Contact spokesman Shaun Jones said last night.
''The decision to sell the properties was about freeing up resources not needed in the ongoing operation of our business and also about providing the local community and tenants with certainty around the future use of the land,'' he said.
''We're working directly with tenants to keep them informed about our process, to provide them with plenty of notice, along with information on how they can take part, in the event that they are interested in purchasing the land.''
Mr Jones said the company was also talking with the hotel tenants ''in the first instance'' about the sale of that property.
The secretary-treasurer of both the Beaumont Residents Group and the Beaumont Hall Committee, Margaret Healy, said the disposal of the land would finally bring some ''certainty'' to the community.
''It will reinforce the fact that Contact no longer has plans for this area - until they did this, there was always that question hanging over it, but now we can be sure the dam is not going ahead,'' she said.
Mrs Healy and her husband have lived on a 0.4ha block of land near the Beaumont Bridge for 37 years. She welcomed the news that Contact also planned to give some land to the community.
The site was yet to be finalised but local residents had suggested a block of land between the former school and the community-owned Beaumont Hall, in East Ferry St.
''It would make a nice park and has the Clutha Gold cycle trail alongside it, too,'' she said.
Earlier in the week, Contact announced its disposal of land holdings in the Upper Clutha that were no longer needed for hydro-electric development was largely complete.
It inherited those 21 properties along the Clutha, upstream of Lake Dunstan, from the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand in the late 1990s.
