Karioi power plan grows six-fold

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 8, Issue 376, 5 March 1991, Page 1

Karioi power plan grows six-fold

The latest Karioi-Whangaehu power scheme proposal is being hailed as having environmentally positive impact.

At a special meeting at the Ohakune Hotel last Tuesday Lions, Rotarians and invited guests were presented with the latest King Country Electric Power Board consultants' reports on the scheme. They were told that the original project, which involved a small diversion dam on a Whangaehu River tributary with a canal to a 300 hectare lake then canal to a power house on the banks of the Whangaehu, would be only marginally economical. But that with the addition of an 11 kilometre tunnel extracting water from the Whangaehu River and the building of a 68 megawatt powerhouse at the end of it would make the scheme easily economically sound. The upper Karioi scheme would provide some storage capacity for both the upper power houses as well as the lower power house. When the scheme was investigated more than ten years ago it would have been impossible to use the Whangaehu wa-, ter because of its highly acidic nature. The river is acidic because it drains the sulphurous Ruapehu Crater Lake. Now there is technology available to handle the

acid problem, the consultants have found. Power Board general manager Peter Till said, while a group of canoeists has expressed opposition to the taking of water from the river, that the regional council advises people not to use the river for recreational use. He said

the river is inaccessible so doesn't have any great scenic value. Because of the acidity the

river contains no fish life. Mr Till said it was not often that the environ-

mental aspects of such a scheme were as ideal. He said it used renewable Turnpage2