Sorry I missed my last month’s column, I needed a holiday. That was spent house boating with old friends on Lake Powell, which lies in the States of Utah and Arizona. Lake Powell is the largest man made lake in America and lies behind the Glen Dam which was constructed in the early 1960’s. The Lake is some 200 miles long, with a foreshore of 2000 miles, and within it are 1000 canyons – a bit like boating on the moon some have said. Bring it up on your computer, and have a look at it, it’s an extraordinary landscape. It was as hot as hell, the top temperature we endured was 45 degrees which was 120 degrees in their language.
The road trips were extraordinary, from San Franscisco to the southern Los Angeles area, out through Nevada into Arizona back into Utah, then back into Arizona, then back into southern Utah and finally back into Arizona to a town called Page which was the construction town for the dam during the building period. Every time I go to America, parts of it never cease to amaze me. This particular time, it was the solar panel farms creating electricity for the local areas. At times there were hundreds of acres of them, huge mirrors reflecting the sun into the panels to generate the electricity.
Anyway, back to more mundane things – I have a concern about the historic old rubbish tips on the North Shore, this concern comes about by the recent event on the West Coast of the South Island when about 75 kilometres of coastline and riverbed was strewn with rubbish after torrential rainfall and flooding in late March exposed a disused landfill near the township of Fox Glacier. This was finally cleaned up last month after unbelievable volunteer efforts, which included hundreds of locals, travelers and backpackers cleaned up the rubbish. Thousands of man hours’ work and hundreds of bags of rubbish, truly a great effort.
Maybe we should look at our old rubbish tips, just three that spring to mind are the former Devonport Borough Council tip in Ngataringa Bay; one huge rotting edifice of the 1960’s and 1970’s – just buried by a few feet of topsoil to this day. Another one was at Woodhall Park near Narrow Neck Beach, where we used to play as kids, another rotting time bomb, again covered by a few feet of topsoil. The most concerning one for me though, is the lower fields of Rosmini College where young people play every day of the week. All my five boys went to school there, and if they grazed or cut themselves on the playing fields, it would nearly always result in a horrible infection. Maybe there should be a long term plan to make good what has been just a relatively superficial cover up of pretty toxic ground.
I had some correspondence recently from the Wairau Estuary Enhancement Promotion Society, these are ratepayers who have joined together to take the Council to task in regards to the Milford Creek Marina area.
A recent meeting of the Auckland Council Healthy Waters workshop on the Wairau Estuary and ratepayers began with enthusiasm but ended in disgruntled uncertainty and dissatisfaction.
The opening presentation inspired, with promises of restoration and enhancement, enhanced ecology and biodiversity and importantly, improved storm water quality of Wairau Estuary and the adjacent beaches of Milford and Castor Bay.
This estuary is a murky mess, plagued with a long term ban on swimming and shellfish gathering at the mouth of the Estuary. Toxic discharges including lead and other metals, industrial solvents, storm water and sewerage all mixed up in a toxic cocktail which spews on to the beaches at North Milford and Castor Bay, Milford beach and South Milford, and then Takapuna beach. This is as a result of a long term legacy of permissive regulatory regimes, and lax monitoring and enforcement by the Local Authority.
Good work is being done by tracing storm water cross contamination with sewage, but there has been decades of inadequate action by successive Councils. The Community has communicated to Council the importance placed on healthy waters, these beaches are a regional resource. Any fine summer day Milford Beach and Reserve is heaving with families from all over Auckland, some of them swimming in the Estuary. Council tells us a proportion of rates is targeted to address water quality, but of this Auckland wide rate, only 20% gets spent on the North Shore.
Plans for a boardwalk and landscaping are commendable, but do nothing to fix the fundamental problem of the dirty water in the Wairau Estuary, and Milford and Castor Bay beaches. Everyone, presenters and ratepayers alike, knows that a boardwalk is nothing but lipstick on a toxic pig that will remain a hazard to health. Having a public boardwalk over this toxic cocktail may be a Health and Safety conundrum for the Council. Boardwalks invite people to walk over the water, but children may topple in, teens are likely to jump or dive off such structures.
The 80 ratepayers present at this meeting were overwhelmingly clear that water quality was of paramount importance for the Estuary and the adjacent beaches. However, what we were asked to vote on was whether we approved of minor planting and bank stabilization along the Estuary edges. The jarring disconnect between the soaring opening rhetoric and these paltry peripheral crumbs was felt by all. The fine Council staff clearly felt an uncomfortable obligation to obfuscate on behalf of their elected bosses, the bosses who are yet to realise that healthy water is as much a priority for ratepayers as it is for the Prime Minister who affirmed recently “Every New Zealander should be able to swim in their river without getting sick”.
Just to finish off, here’s another question for you to ponder on for a month – I have heard there is a new pedestrian crossing planned between the football fields and the cemetery, this is to enable safe passage over the busy road. Usually for families coming to and from their games. I’ve got no problem with a pedestrian crossing here, but I do have a problem with the cost, which is an estimated $300,000. The road width at that particular area is approximately 10 metres, so how does a crossing cost $30,000 per metre? This is absolutely absurd. Just think about that. See you next month.
By the way Aidan Bennett, our beloved Editor in Chief, the Henry Luce of the North Shore (if you don’t know who Henry Luce is, Google him) is standing for Council with Danny Watson. We live in interesting times.