PHOTO:BERNARD SPRAGG Plans for a private luxury lodge to be built 40 metres from Lake Pūkaki’s shore have been scuppered.
A Hong Kong billionaire has dropped a controversial plan to build a sprawling lodge overlooking a scenic South Island lake.
The consent application, which was to be referred straight to the Environment Court, was quietly withdrawn last week, after the High Court rejected a bid to force the Crown to hand over a sliver of lakeside land.
Green groups had decried the lodge plan as inappropriate.
It would have been the first occupied building on the eastern shore of Lake Pūkaki, the country’s principal hydro storage lake. (The only other building is the Pūkaki power station, 9km south.)
Meridian, the 51-per cent-taxpayer-owned electricity company, will be relieved, as the decision reinforces the primacy of hydro-electricity generation. The partially listed power company, one of New Zealand’s biggest, had warned the court forcing a sale “has within it the seeds of future conflict”.
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