WeSay Complexities cloud the basic facts

DOME VALLEY LANDFILL guidelines at all levels of local and national government, many of which completely fail to relate to each other.

It is four-and-a-half years now since men in suits from Waste Management NZ (WM) cold-called Dome Valley residents with the bombshell news that the global corporate was planning to build a giant regional landfill on their doorstep. And it is more than 10 months since six organisations took their appeal, against Auckland Council’s decision to grant WM resource consent, to the Environment Court. Since the case began, literally thousands of pages of evidence, reports, notes, maps and memoranda have been filed for the two judges and three commissioners to consider. When the hearing was finally adjourned on April 28, Judge Jeff Smith said it was probably the most complex case the court had ever dealt with.

Watching from the sidelines for much of the proceedings, we can only agree. The legislation and regulation surrounding the issue of planning for waste disposal is labyrinthine, involving a rat’s nest of different laws, statutes, acts, plans and

Council considers Māori wards or status quo

Aucklanders will be asked for their views later this year on the question of whether or not to introduce Māori seats on Auckland Council. The Government is currently working through the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill, which passed its second reading last month. The bill would see the removal of a set number of councillors on council and make it easier to establish Māori wards.

Two models are being explored – the Parliamentary model and the Royal Commission’ model. The Parliamentary model calculates the total number of Māori seats based on the number of voters on the

Māori electoral roll versus the number of ward councillors. For Auckland this would mean one or two Māori seats.

Council’s governance services manager Rose Leonard said the consultation document would need to explain council’s governance model, which includes the Independent Māori Statutory Board (IMSB).

Cr Mike Lee said under the old Auckland Regional Council, mana whenua had indicated a strong preference for the IMSB over a ‘one person, one vote’ approach. Consultation is expected to happen no later than August 1 this year.

Long days have been spent by parties on all sides drilling down into the legal minutiae of various acts or plans, and what their intent might or might not have been, the precise definition of such words as municipal, infrastructure or landfill itself, or the difference between offset, compensation and mitigation when discussing the inevitable extensive loss of native wildlife.

The court has been dragged deeper and deeper into this morass of legislative nomenclature as time has gone on; even as a part-time observer – or one of many lay witnesses – it’s been exhausting, bewildering and at times overwhelming. Now the case is finished, the over-arching impression that remains is that perhaps the devil really is in the detail. Because the deeper you get into trying to understand the nuance of everything that needs to be considered and addressed, the easier it is to forget what are to us at least, two very basic facts.

First and foremost, the proposed site is seriously the last place anyone with even an ounce of common sense would choose to dump hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rubbish into. It is far too wet, far too steep and far too unstable, and presents an unconscionable risk to the Hoteo and Kaipara catchments.

Secondly, the danger and inconvenience of hundreds of trucks a day crawling up and down the hill from Sheepworld, laden with rubbish and with no way now of getting past them, hardly seems to have been considered. However, it would doubtless be frustratingly front-of-mind for the thousands of motorists who attempt to drive through the Dome each day. We can only hope that the judges and commissioners remember the heartfelt voices and long experience of the many local people who have put their heart and soul into fighting the folly of this application, and take note of their firsthand knowledge of this remote, floodprone and slip-ridden land.

The Dome and Wayby Valleys are not just the wrong place for a landfill – they’re one of the worst sites we could imagine.