On our way through Takaka we also visited the Pupu Hydro Society.
It was a nice enough (if drizzely) hours walk up to the water race & penstock and around and back down to the hydro plant. Long story short, the water way way built for gold miners as a sluice for working the area for gold. They built a hydro plant using the water race from the gold miners time to bring the water across to the point where they dropped it into the generators. It ran from 1929 to 1981… but was then damaged.
In 1981 (when it has stopped operating) it was put up for tender and a bunch of keen locals put in a tender to restore it and turn it into a museum, at some personal risk! They took out loans for $140,000 and had to remortgage to guarantee the loans. It all went well and within 7 years they’d paid everything off.
On average the society earns $80 000 a year all of which is ploughed back into further restorations and road building.
Pretty impressive stuff really :) Well done to those locals getting involved & making it all work.
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