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Guardian
Ashburton
www.guardianONLINE.co.nz
Friday, July 5, 2013
FIRST PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 27, 1879
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Council passes Option A as its preferred second bridge route
The yellow shaded area stretching from Chalmers Avenue (middle, far right) to Grahams Road highlights Option A, the route the Ashburton District Council believes is the best path for the second bridge.
Uncertainty ends in despair for some By Sue Newman Months of uncertainty ended in despair yesterday for a group of Tinwald residents when they ran out of options in their fight against a second bridge route that will run through their backyards. The Ashburton District Council has had a second bridge across the Ashburton River on its radar for several years and has worked through dozens of route options that were finally narrowed down to just two. Each affected about a dozen landowners, with some set to lose their homes while others would lose a portion of their land. Both of the final options affected the same landowners to varying degrees. Option A took a gentle curving route from the river to Grahams Road, while option B involved two T-intersections. It was the first time debate on the bridge route has been held in an open council meeting and when debate was held on the final route there were about 25 members of the public, mainly landowners, in the gallery. While councillors would consider two options, council chief executive Brian Lester said Option A was the better option in terms of traffic safety. Councillor Darryl Nelson took that on board and moved that Option A should be chosen. Jim Burgess seconded the motion. Mayor Angus McKay made it clear where his support lay – Option A. “I have the great-
Four councillors reject both options
Stuart Wilson
Donna Favel
est sympathy for any landowner who will be affected by any decision we make today. We’ve moved through this step by step in in-committee meetings to protect landowners and the question for councillors today is not whether we have a second urban bridge, that decision was made 18 months ago. Our decision today is option A or option B, which will give better urban traffic flows?” Option A gave better alignment although it would affect one property owner to a greater degree, Mr McKay said. No matter where the route went it was going to impact badly on someone, said councillor Neil Brown, indicating his support for Option A. For Robin Kilworth, the bridge route option was one of the most difficult decisions she had made during her years as a councillor.
Martin Nordqvist
“It took me a long time to come to a decision that any bridge was necessary. I couldn’t come to any decision before making a decision on the lights in Tinwald.” With the council committed to the lights, Mrs Kilworth said she would support option A but she wanted an assurance that issues with side roads crossing Chalmers Avenue would be addressed before plans were submitted for land designation. “For me this is about how fast and how often vehicles will travel down Chalmers Avenue.” Stuart Wilson earned himself a round of applause after he stood and said he was opposed to both options. “I’m in favour of a second bridge but to build a bridge just for the east of Tinwald and Lake Hood is not what we should be doing. This won’t help traffic around the McDonald’s corner, particularly
Ken Cutforth
when the new stadium is built,” he said. Ken Cutforth agreed. “We’ve got ahead of ourselves here. It’s in the wrong place and our timing is all wrong,” he said. In the council’s long term plan, the bridge is unlikely to be built for at least 15 years. A bad location is a bad location, said councillor Donna Favel. “I’m exercising my right to say no to this.” When the motion to support option A was put it was won, seven to four. Voting for Option A were: Mayor Angus McKay and councillors Darryl Nelson, Robin Kilworth, Jac Sparks, Neil Brown, Jim Burgess and Don McLeod. Against either option: Stuart Wilson, Donna Favel, Martin Nordqvist and Ken Cutforth. Absent: Alan Totty and John Leadley.
Emotions Adams keen to get run high stuck into RMA
Most of those who listened to the Ashburton District Council vote on the second bridge route said they’d come to council yesterday with a feeling of inevitability. However, watching councillors sign and seal a deal to carve up their properties as part of the route wiped out any hope they’d get a last-minute reprieve, they said. For Paul and Deanna Bell, the council’s choice of option A means the new route will run close to their home while option B would have given them breathing space. A shocked Mrs Bell was reluctant to talk after the council vote but said she had become resigned to the outcome because the project had already moved out of residents’ hands. Ashburton Citizens’ Association chair Diane Rawlinson said that the impact of the long process on many of the landowners had almost broken some. “I’ve watched some of these people age, it’s been incredibly hard on them,” she said. As a group, however, she said most landowners refused to be defeated. “We’re looking at this now and saying, right, what do we have to do next.” Graeme Wilson who will lose his front paddock to the new road is adamant he won’t be chased out of his home. “In one of the plans we were going to lose a piece of our garden, now it’s just on the edge of the garden, but we’re not leaving, we love it here,” he said. Others, however made it clear they wouldn’t be hanging around. The fight to save their properties had taken its toll and some simply wanted to sell up and move on. Among the emotions in the aftermath of the decision, there was also relief, that a decision – no matter how bad – had been made. See editorial, P4
By Linda Clarke Environment Minister Amy Adams can’t wait to get her boots into the Resource Management Act. Reforms are in the wings and the minister told farmers in Ashburton yesterday there was no point fiddling around the edges when bolder changes were necessary. The RMA was been a winner for consultants and lawyers to fight over but a major obstacle to development because of its red tape. Mrs Adams, speaking at Federated Farmers’ national conference, said the act was 21 years old and the most amended piece legislation in the House. “In the last two years we have lost more than $800 million in projects that did not go ahead because of the RMA process. Projects that never got off the ground because they could not work their way through the process. The biggest problem with the RMA is trying to figure out what you can and can’t do.” She said Meridian Energy had spent $9 million and three years trying to get consent for a windfarm to eventually be told their chosen location was not suitable. “That’s $9 million we as power users had to pay.” Horticulture NZ says its members have also spent $30 million in the past 12 months on RMA compliance processes. “We are talking about a significant cost and that money would have been better spent improving our environmental processes and protocols.” She said she had also been contacted by one homeowner claiming RMA compliance to extend a deck on his house by four metres would cost $7000.
Amy Adams Mrs Adams said she was not afraid of jumping into the core of the act and challenging some of its basic principles. She expects plenty of noisy debate during the reform process. The minister said rules were still needed to protect New Zealand’s natural assets for future generations. Managing freshwater was critical. While water storage was the obvious answer to water quantity issues, water quality needed buyin from farmers, industry and urban communities alike, she said. Farmers complained yesterday that councils could spill wastewater into waterways without consequence, but farmers who breached discharge conditions were pilloried. The minister said farmers should also be taking advantage of the ultra fast broadband being rolled out by Government and private partners to almost all the country. The technology would help farmers make business decisions based on real-time environmental and animal health monitoring, as well as help schools and medical centres. More from Federated Farmers’ conference, P2
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