A bid to force a review of Datagrid NZ Partnership Limited's water permit has failed.
Environment Southland has rejected a request by the Southland Sustainable Resource Coalition to review the datacentre company's consent for water take and use, ruling the application does not meet the required circumstances under the Resource Management Act 1991.
General Manager Strategy and Regulation Hayley Fitchett said the bar for triggering a review was not cleared.
"In this case, the company's consented operational water take is less than 10% of the limit set in the Proposed Southland Water and Land Plan," Fitchett said.
"The consent is yet to be exercised and so there's no monitoring data to demonstrate the consented rate or volume cannot be fully utilised, either."
A consent can be reviewed where it is necessary to ensure limits set in a regional plan can be met — but with Datagrid's take sitting well below those limits, and no operational history to assess, Environment Southland found no grounds to proceed.
Environment Southland holds consents relating to discharges to air and land, water take, and a small wetland on the site. The original application was not publicly notified because it was assessed as having only minor environmental effects under the Resource Management Act. Parties identified as potentially affected provided written approvals.
An ecology report noted the affected wetland is small, dominated by exotic pasture species and contains no indigenous species. No modifications or drainage to a separate regionally significant wetland at the south end of the site were authorised.
The land use consent to establish the datacentre was issued by Southland District Council. Enquiries about that consent should go to that council.
Further information on the Datagrid resource consents — including application documents, technical reports, and the consent notification report — is available at es.govt.nz/datagrid.