Meridian has met the challenge to minimise the environmental footprint at the White Hill wind farm site through our efforts to preserve the indigenous vegetation.

How did we do it?

"We were conscious well before construction began that White Hill contained a very good representation of indigenous vegetation," says project manager Paul Wilson. "It includes mixed shrub land and two stands of silver beech forest on the lower slopes, grading up into mixed shrub-red tussock, then a mosaic of shrub land and red tussock grassland, with the grassland prevailing along the upper slopes."

One of the consent conditions was to fence off 38 hectares of the red tussock on the upper slopes, something Meridian did prior to construction starting. Care was also taken during the earthworks phase to preserve the red tussock as much as possible.

"When the earthworks for the substation and switchyard area were being undertaken, we took out the red tussock around the area, putting the plants into a holding nursery for replanting later during the site rehabilitation process," says Paul.

Care was also taken at turbine sites to ensure that the cut for each site was minimised, and excavation and dump sites were stabilised before being grassed and replanted in red tussock.

We reduced the number of dump sites

The number of dump sites for spoil was reduced from the allocated resource consent level of 13 to eight, thus lessening the environmental impact. Excavations for the turbine foundations and roading created about 500,000 cubic metres of excess spoil, which was placed in spoil dumps before being covered by topsoil.

"We were very careful to rehabilitate the spoil dump areas – benching for stability and covering with topsoil, grassing and replanting with red tussock – in time this will re-vegetate and there'll be no visible sign on the landscape," Paul says.

Other initiatives

The project also included a number of other key initiatives to protect the landscape. Rather than using or modifying the existing Windy Ridge Road to access the site and facilitate trucking of turbine components onto the site (earthworks to create the necessary gradient would have left highly visible scars on the landscape), an alternative site access road was constructed along the foot of the site running parallel with the existing 66kV transmission line. In addition, erosion and sedimentation control measures were put in place to protect the environment during construction.

As part of the resource consent requirements, Meridian has also been carrying out on-site monitoring of a nesting pair of karearea (New Zealand falcons), a threatened species. This monitoring began during the project's pre-construction phase and is continuing.