Source: Radio New Zealand
Renders of the proposed floating sauna on Lake Henry, looking north. Supplied / Southland District Council
A proposal to run a floating sauna in a popular Te Anau reserve has gone up in steam in the face of public backlash.
The plan was for people to sweat it out on a floating pontoon on Lake Henry with the option to finish with a cold plunge.
Floating Sauna Limited first applied for a licence to occupy in Ivon Wilson Park under the Reserves Act back in 2024 – it was granted a resource consent in February.
The Southland District Council spent hours discussing the many concerns residents raised at a meeting on Wednesday.
In the busy tourist town of Te Anau, Diana Zadravec said Ivon Wilson Park was a welcome patch of tranquility
“We really appreciate to have one space in town that is not commercialised, that is not pre-dominantly for tourism,” she said.
She and others have been fighting to keep the floating sauna from setting up shop on the lake at its heart.
“It’s just the place you can go and just walk and have quiet and have peace, and it’s just incredible. There’s this little lake in the middle that’s like the jewel in it.”
The company’s application said the saunas would create a new way to appreciate the park without compromising the enjoyment of the wider reserve and it would provide a year round opportunity for residents and visitors to “provide for their health and well-being”.
Renders of the proposed floating sauna at Ivon Wilson Park in Te Anau, looking east. Supplied / Southland District Council
Earlier this year, council received 210 submissions on the planned sauna – 170 were against it and 37 backed the proposal.
Councillors considered those points of view at Wednesday’s meeting, with councillor Matt Wilson saying residents had ensured their voices were heard.
“Lake Henry is only this big. There’s three public platforms and one out of three of them would be commercialised so that sentiment from the submissions, I think, really does need to stand,” he said.
Many residents did not want to see a business on a lake they treasured, he said.
“The acknowledgement that Te Anau’s got a strong tourism economy but the park was cited as a space where locals could step away from the commercial tourism and go to a local space that wasn’t commercialised.”
Councillor Jaspreet Boparai agreed.
“Multiple people said that the jetty’s the first place we head to when we visit the park,” she said.
A resource consent for the saunas was granted in February.
But councillor Don Byars said that should not mean the community’s environmental concerns were discounted, especially as the saunas were wood-fired.
“Heating saunas to accommodate 160-something people (a day), I would have thought that on balance that there is going to be an effect of smoke in that park. I don’t see how you can rule that out,” he said.
When it came to decision time, no one backed the proposal and it was declined.
Diana Zadravec said it was the right call to make.
“I think it was never a question of whether the community supported a sauna project, it was just not the right location for it,” she said.
“I was really impressed with the robustness of the discussion that was held by the council. It was a very thorough and long discussion about it.”
A floating sauna on Lake Henry might be off the cards, but some locals hope the idea will not lose steam – just find somewhere else to go.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand