Place:Twizel, Canterbury, New Zealand

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Twizel is the largest town in the Mackenzie District, in the Canterbury Region of the South Island of New Zealand. The town was founded in 1968 to house construction workers on the Upper Waitaki Hydroelectric Scheme. Today, Twizel is a service and tourist town for visitors to the area. It has a resident population of during the summer, holidaymakers nearly triple the town's population.

Nearby Lake Ruataniwha supports rowing, sailing and water skiing. Twizel is 37 km (29 minutes drive) east of Lake Ōhau village, 30 km (20 minutes drive) north of Omarama and 60 km (42 minutes drive) south of Lake Tekapo.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Hydro town

The present town was built in 1968 by the Ministry of Works and Development as a greenfields project to house workers constructing the Upper Waitaki hydroelectricity scheme. The name comes from the nearby Twizel River, in turn named for Twizel Bridge in Northumberland by John Turnbull Thomson, Chief Surveyor of Otago in the mid-19th century.

The Waitaki hydro scheme consisted of of canals, two dams, and four powerhouses (Tekapo B, Ohau A, B and C), and the formation of Lake Ruataniwha, producing 848 MW of electricity. At the height of the project in the 1970s, population peaked of around 6,000.^[1]

At the time when the construction of the Upper Waitaki hydroelectricity scheme peaked, roughly in 1976, there were 800 cabins for single people and 1,224 family homes in Twizel. These mostly belonged to the Ministry of Works and Development to house the 1,900 employees of the Upper Waitaki hydroelectricity scheme.

The town was laid out in a 'Scandinavian' fashion, featuring looping roads and pedestrian ways, making it usually far more direct to walk than use a car. Shops, school, and recreational parkland formed a hub in the centre of the town, around which the residential area were built. A previous version of this layout had been tried at Otematata. Accommodation was highly segregated: in addition to single men's quarters in the middle of town, there was a series of different houses available, with the smallest for workers, staff houses for teachers and professionals, and the largest for engineers and other high-status residents.^[1]

As the intention was for the town to revert to farmland, there were many temporary features. For example, instead of putting in kerbing, channels, and footpaths at the edge of the road, a single expanse of seal was contoured in a very flat 'W' shape: the seal was highest at the outer edge (footpath) and in the middle (centreline), with a lower area serving as a channel and delineation between the roadway and footpath. Likewise, most of the town's telephone local loop is strung above ground to save the task of burying and then removing the lines. Most houses were prefabricated, and intended to be portable. Some were brought from Otematata, and some were later moved to Clyde for the next hydroelectricity project.

Hydroelectric scheme winds down

Government ministers argued that the town was intended to be temporary and eventually demolished. The government ministers saw Twizel as a financial liability. In October 1981, 100 houses had been reserved with the intention to transport them to Aramoana in expectation that the proposed aluminium smelter would be built.^[2] Several overseas investors offered to buy the whole town and develop it for tourism. One such investor, had plans to turn it into a "Las Vegas style casino town".^[2]

By 1982, the population had fallen to around 3,500 people. During 1983, the Ministry of Works and Development started to sell houses and garages. Several hundred were sold and transported away by new owners.^[2]

However, in 1983, as the hydroelectric project was winding up and finally ended in 1986. Residents successfully fought to save the town itself. The town was handed over to the Mackenzie County Council. The government offered 325 houses, 100 further sections, community facilities and a cash grant to the council.^[2] The Mackenzie County Council then offered these for sale. In 1984, the Mackenzie County Council eventually took over 540 houses and 14 shops as well as the 100 sections and community facilities.^[2]

Post hydro town

With the local government reorganisation that occurred in 1989, Twizel came under the auspices of the Mackenzie District Council.^[2]

With the construction phase completed of the Upper Waitaki hydroelectricity scheme, the makeup of the town in the late 1980s was significantly different. The population (of 1179 people in 1986, declining to 1017 people in 1991) was now made of those working on the operations side of the hydroelectric scheme, working in the service sector, retired and those taking advantage of the cheap housing. Some houses became holiday homes for people living out of town.^[2] Tourism developed slowly in the 1990s with a number of hotels and motels being built.^[2]

Twizel was the base for some of the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand operations workforce. In 1999, Meridian Energy, which had inherited the local assets, moved its operations base from Twizel to Christchurch.^[2]

In 2009, the community were consulted in a workshop to identify issues and gaps in services that residents felt existed. Issues identified included the viability of emergency services, accessibility of health services, residential care for the elderly, access to dental care and drug and alcohol services.

In 2015, the new $1.8 million Twizel Medical Centre was completed. This included a helipad in order to transport sick patients to hospital via helicopter. Meridian Energy provided $150,000 funding for the helipad.

A building boom occurred in 2017 with five new subdivisions all sold and a busy construction industry.

Financial support to build an aviary near Twizel in order to support the conservation of the black stilt (kakī) was provided in 2017 by the Sangreal Foundation. The captive breeding program in Twizel (and Christchurch) was a success in 2021 with 150 juvenile black stilt (kakī) being released into the wild. The 2021 breeding season was also deemed a success with eighteen black stilt chicks hatching over the Christmas period.

By early 2019, tourism played an important part in the economy of Twizel. By this stage, tourists had spent one million overnight stays in the town, unemployment was sitting at less than 1% and employers could not recruit for jobs. Twizel would get very busy during the summer months and during rowing events.

Twizel's population is expected to grow by 2.6% each year between 2020 and 2050. with the population expected to grow to 3395 people in the year 2050. The Mackenzie District Council presented three options for how the town could evolve with the growth. in October 2020. Local residents provided negative feedback to the plans with complaints that they were too similar and said that the population growth was underestimated.In January 2021, there were concerns that the display of earth moving vehicles, that was used in the Waitaki hydroelectric power projects, at the entrance to the town were unsafe. A report recommended that the vehicles were either fenced off or brought up to the standards that playgrounds are expected to be at.

In May 2021, work began on a $6.5 million project to replace the asbestos cement water pipes with polyethylene pipes as the old pipes had reached the end of their useful life.

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