Lyttelton blow

Having thought it had successfully navigated concerns previously expressed by the parties when being granted consents last month, LPC was due to commence dredging on the NZ$120m project in March 2018.

However, this month’s appeals have halted those plans and left LPC doubting if a related NZ$56m project to develop a new berth to regenerate its cruise shipping trade – lost since the 2011 Canterbury earthquake – will be completed as planned by the third quarter of 2019.

As well as doubling the harbour channel’s length to 6.5 kilometres and widening it by 20 metres, the dredging project would deepen it by about six metres to enable LPC to accommodate 350-metre containerships with 14.5-metre-draught, compared with the current 290-metre and 10.5-metre-draught visitors.

This is considered vital to ensuring LPC remains a major port of call in New Zealand and is not demoted to feeder port status.

However, the appellants have respectively argued the 18m cubic metres of sediment the project would dump out to sea over two years, would jeopardise the harbour’s marine environment for food gathering and affect surfing wave conditions.