Council in flurry over future of fighter base

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Waitakere City Council is scrambling for ways to make up the $60 million a year the local economy would lose if the Whenuapai Air Base is closed.

Mayor Bob Harvey yesterday formed a mayoral taskforce to guide council lobbying for the most valuable use for the base in northwest Auckland.

A strategic management report to the council said the Crown would either vacate the base or reduce defence operations there.

It said the Government was expected to announce the future of the base as a defence facility next month.

Any withdrawal by the Air Force would take about five years.

The report said it was possible that the Government would allow the base to be shared by military and commercial aviation operations.

But the report said Whenuapai could also be a source of industrial, residential, or reserve land, or a mixture of them all.

Mr Harvey has suggested turning Whenuapai into a commercial airport and points out that it was Auckland's airport until Mangere was established.

But he said the council needed to consider the options of most benefit to the city.

The taskforce's six members include Bryan Mogridge, who chairs the Enterprise Waitakere Board and is a former chairman of the Tourism Board.

Waitakere is already losing the economic benefit from Hobsonville Air Base military personnel and their families moving to Ohakea, in the Manawatu.

A Government decision on the use of 63ha of the Hobsonville land is expected any day. Housing New Zealand is vying with superyacht builder Sovereign Yachts for that land.

Development of Hobsonville is behind a $390,000 study of the state of the upper Waitemata Harbour, which was announced yesterday. The study of the effects of development on the 202 sq km area is to be made and paid for jointly by the Auckland Regional, Rodney District and North Shore and Waitakere City councils and Transit New Zealand.

Project leader Geoff Winn said the question to be answered was how much development the upper harbour could sustain.

Main concerns were for the health of marine life and harbour waters if there was a greater run-off of sediments and contaminants.

The upper harbour is poorly flushed by the tides and sensitive to pollution and the buildup of contaminants in run-off.

The study area also drains other development hot-spots such as Westgate, Albany Basin, Greenhithe Peninsula, Riverhead and Kumeu.

The study will also take into account the effect of earthworks conducted for roading projects such as the Upper Harbour Motorway and the Northwestern Motorway extension from Westgate to Brigham Creek Rd.