"How to be divested of your property
in two easy steps"
Simon Cook wants Contact Energy out of Beaumont.
It was too late to repair the financial damage that had torn his family apart, the Friends of Beaumont member said. But others in the small Clutha River community could not move forward until Contact sold its properties there and the shadow of the Tuapeka Dam was gone forever, he said.
Contact's predecessor, the Electricity Corporation; in 1990 started buying Beaumont and Millers Flat properties for the proposed dam project. It offered Simon and Kaye Cook $191,000 for their 20 hectare farmlet, more than $30,000 above government valuation,. The Cooks borrowed on the basis of the offer. Then, after tortuous negotiations, the sale fell through.
Nobody else wanted a property threatened by flooding and suddenly, the Cooks were in deep financial trouble. When the bank sold them up last year, the property fetched just $65,000. The stress pulled their marriage apart, Mr Cook said.
The story was not unusual in Beaumont, he said. Residents health, their marriages, relationships with family and friends - all had suffered the pressure cooker of unrealistic expectations and division between those who sold and those who didn't.
Prices plummeted when Contact in 1996, deferred the dam project, but kept the land it already had.
Mrs Cook said anger against Contact still running high.
"We're just about ready for a lynching. I doubt if anyone in Beaumont is their shares."
Getting the 84 Contact properties back on the open market is the new goal of the anti-dam lobby group Friends of Beaumont. Those at a meeting in Millers Flat on Saturday decided to put the heat on Contact's new 40 percent shareholder, Edison Energy.
Group co-chairman Graeme Collins said the California-based company bought into Contact unaware of its "warts" including the Tuapeka project.
"We'll take any legal action that may be an irritant to (Edison) - oppose them until they do the decent thing and get out of the area altogether," he said.
Contact-owned properties would be investigated for historical or cultural features that could warrant a caveat on land use.
"How to be divested of your property