Access to pylons a concern for all

Opinion editorial by Roger Sutton, Orion Chief Executive Officer
Published in The Press on 6 May 2010

The ongoing debate between South Canterbury farmers and Transpower over access to pylons on their land raises some important issues.

This confrontation in South Canterbury follows the major power cuts that occurred in Auckland in late January when a Waikato farmer refused Transpower access to maintain lines on his property.  Transmission lines arced onto a shelter belt on Steve Meier’s farm, causing a fire that cut power to 50,000 Auckland homes and businesses.

Federated Farmers is now campaigning for compensation for its members with pylons on their land, and wants a compensation agreement in place before land access arrangements are made.

We should all be concerned when Transpower is denied access to rural properties to undertake crucial line and pylon maintenance.  The farming sector has driven much of the growth in electricity demand in our region over the last 15 years, and this huge increase in rural power use is the key reason behind the need to upgrade and more frequently maintain much of the national grid. 

In Canterbury, power use in urban Christchurch has risen by 15 per cent in the past 10 years – during the same period, rural power use in the region has doubled. Irrigation, the conversion of many farms to dairying and the rural sector’s ever increasing dependence on mains electricity are the key reasons for this growth.

Transpower’s transmission lines play a critical role in keeping this economic hub of our region operating. This is particularly so in rural Canterbury, including the Orion network, where growth in demand has increased more steeply than in almost every other region.

I’ve observed the incidents in South Canterbury and the Waikato with concern because network operators, and in particular Transpower, rely on the cooperation of the farming community to enable us to maintain and upgrade our networks.  The maintenance of transmission lines is absolutely central to providing a secure and reliable electricity supply to all elements of our community, from farms to schools and hospitals. When the lines are threatened, so is the livelihood of our community.

Unfortunately this debate comes down to money. The South Canterbury farmers involved seek rental payments and other forms of compensation for lines installed more than 50 years ago, in the mid 1950s.

Transpower was given the right to build the lines by government, and in some cases compensation was paid to farmers at that time – according to the law as it then stood.

However, from the 1950s until the 1980s, urban electricity users paid levies to fund new rural power lines so that rural communities could have electricity.  These subsidies continue today – in our network area, rural and urban customers effectively pay the same price for their electricity transmission and distribution service, even though it costs us far more to deliver electricity to rural areas where our infrastructure is more expensive to maintain.

Landowners seeking financial compensation from Transpower for power pylons on their properties, which now impose greater cost on them than they did when first built, may wish to consider the wider implications of such a user pays approach.  The key question being: should rural electricity users now pay more for their electricity because it costs so much more to deliver them a reliable electricity supply?

Transpower has already been to court once in a dispute with a South Canterbury dairy farming operation, about three years ago. In this case, Transpower asked the court to rule whether it had the right to enter land to upgrade the lines on the dairy properties – upgrades that were needed partly to meet increasing rural loads caused by dairying and irrigation.

The Environment Court found that while the landowner had property rights, so did Transpower, entitling it to enter the properties to maintain its pylons.

We all benefit from the national grid, which we collectively own via the state.  Like much other infrastructure, most power lines, including Transpower’s and the pylons that support them, are community owned.

Rural people are generally credited with a stronger sense of community than those of us who live in cities, and tend to have fewer problems understanding this concept.  For the farmers in South Canterbury involved in this confrontation, that level of understanding seems to have been suspended.

Members of Federated Farmers who do not have power pylons on their land may also question whether it is appropriate for their representative organisation to take such a strong stand on this issue when the vast majority of its membership has little to gain and much to lose in this debate.