Mining man fronting airport opposition

Tarras newcomer Chris Goddard is leading Sustainable Tarras’ battle to prevent a Central Otago airport development. Marjorie Cook profiles the mining company consultant. 

Chris Goddard has worked as an ‘‘all sorts’’ during his 27 years in the mining industry.

Along the way, he became a ‘‘certified black belt’’ in the Lean Six Sigma business model of waste elimination, quality processing and lean manufacturing.

Mr Goddard and his wife Donna bought their dream 8ha block beside the Mata-au/Clutha River years before they moved back home to New Zealand from Brisbane.

Mrs Goddard arrived in 2019 and Mr Goddard returned last year, just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The couple run their consultancy business, Black Swan, from a collection of cabins and insulated shipping containers, while working on building a sustainable home.

‘‘The cabins are consented. We picked them up at the Wanaka Show just five minutes before lockdown,’’ Mr Goddard recalled.

‘‘We were all ready to go but Covid is many different things. There were supply chain problems, even cladding for the shipping container as a little office, the buy price went up 30% the day we needed to buy it.’’

Despite the hustle, they nestled in to enjoy a lifestyle that treads lightly on the planet.

They have installed a massive worm sewer and a large solar panel bank to warm and light their lives and are growing their own food.

A large boxed vegetable garden is full of early garlic and spring onions and free-range chooks supply several eggs a day.

Their building platform has river views and the air is filled with birdsong.

Mr Goddard could handle looking at the increasing development in the area, but what he did not want to look at or listen to was aircraft flying to and from an airport just minutes up the road, he said.

Born in Palmerston North, Mr Goddard moved to Invercargill in the 1990s for his first job at the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, in IT.

‘‘Tiwai had a worldwide profile because it was the only production plant on the planet that had the year 2000 problem in 1996. [That] was the last year before the year 2000 where the year had 366 days. Computers thought years only had 365 days.

‘‘So on that New Year’s Eve to 1996 it [Tiwai’s computer system] had a bit of a conniption. Luckily I was on leave that day. A very clever man, now retired, managed to fix it by shorting out some batteries on the computer with a paper clip.’’

On December 31, 1999, Tiwai’s managing director told Mr Goddard he could have a management job in the Gladstone mining area of Australia, so he moved across the Tasman and began climbing the Rio Tinto ladder.

‘‘I’ve had so many roles over my career working for that company. I’ve done maintenance, IT, management, business improvement. My last role with them, in Perth, was around business transformation and labour.’’

Mr Goddard now consults with companies about how to attract and retain people.

‘‘We are very generalist consulting company, on culture, management, labour supply, merger and acquisition support, all from a shipping container here at Tarras.’’

As Sustainable Tarras chairman he is fronting the airport resistance, but he said the group had more concerns, including local business support, growing the Tarras School roll and keeping Central Otago living costs affordable.

After CIAL confirmed it had spent $45million buying 750ha of farmland near Tarras last year, Mr Goddard went to a Christchurch City Council meeting ‘‘to welcome them to Tarras as new residents’’.

During his 10-minute slot, he pointed out the council-owned airport company’s development would have quite a big impact on Tarras and suggested that was something councillors had not considered.

He felt his presentation had ‘‘a little bit’’ of a communications outcome.

‘‘At the time, they were quite quiet. The councillors did not ask too many questions. Afterwards they decided to engage directly with the airport company, which was something the council had never done before ...’’

An Extinction Rebellion lobby group was also at the meeting to talk about climate change. Its members lay on the floor to make their point — something the quietly spoken Tarras man did not do.

However, his airport development concerns did include climate change, he said.

‘‘The environmental impact is the idea of building it. The running of it is bad as well. You have jet fuel and unburnt hydrocarbons strewn across the landscape. But the carbon footprint of building a runway and terminal is equivalent of many, many, many years of aircraft operation,’’ he said.

Water rights were also an issue. The airport’s purchases included a daily water take right for 1millionlitres from the Clutha. Mr Goddard queried what impact that would have.

He also had a huge thicket of questions about mass tourism and transport.

These questions and many others had not been properly answered, he said.

The airport’s own feasibility studies do not finish until 2022, and Mr Goddard understood that.

CIAL has published a study timetable and has generally stuck to it despite Covid-19 restrictions.

But that does not prevent Sustainable Tarras from doing its own homework.

Mr Goddard had drilled through census data to the point he knew there were about 2000 families or people who lived near the airport site, between Bell Lane, State Highway 8 and Maori Point Rd.

Sustainable Tarras had recently engaged a Sydney information technology specialist to design a census-style survey of those locals, and Mr Goddard was proud he got a high percentage of return — 41%, with just 13% supporting the airport.

‘‘By doing it properly we know for sure what the current community’s perspective is instead of guessing or making it up as we go,’’ Mr Goddard said.

Sustainable Tarras has also started a parliamentary petition against the airport, published on October 5, that runs until September 28, 2022.

Mr Goddard had talked with Extinction Rebellion and senior mining industry leaders about his mining background and his environmental advocacy.

He said they accepted what he was doing.

Everything, from driving without a lead foot to planning direct routes and using water, was important.

His mantra at Rio Tinto had been ‘‘don’t leave anything behind’’, ‘‘don’t be wasteful’’ and ‘‘don’t be wasteful of the communities as well’’.

‘‘From a lot of the engagements we’ve had over the last year it has become apparent that Tarras is out of sight, out of mind, on the edge of things.’’