Editorial: The stench of poor infrastructure planning - prepare for more big stinks

EDITORIAL

“The receptacle of every imaginable filth, bubbling in the noon day sun, and for every hour of the day and night sending out poisonous gases to mingle with the air we breathe... why is this filthy nuisance permitted to exist - an open, dirty, evil smelling sewer”.

That evocative prose ran in the pages of the New Zealand Herald in March 1870, decrying the “foul atmosphere” of Ligar Canal, an open drain in Auckland’s Queen St that was covered later that decade.

Fast forward 154 years and the people of Auckland face a problem of the same vein, albeit far less severe than in the 19th century.

Cardinal West is a 470-home development on a former dairy farm at Red Hills on the urban-rural fringe in West Auckland where 341 homes, 40 of them empty, have been built without permanent wastewater solutions.

As the Herald’s Bernard Orsman reported last week residents are complaining about the smell, which is expected to get worse heading into summer.

Watercare says the interim solution is to support growth and a permanent connection for homes should be in place by late next year.

Waitākere councillor Ken Turner told the Herald that Cardinal West pointed to the naive political belief that delivering more houses solves Auckland’s problems.

“We must slow down intensification until our infrastructure has caught up,” he said.

“Trucking wastewater by road is just the old-fashioned night cart going door to door.”

The lag between population growth and infrastructure has long plagued this country and is becoming more and more acute.

As the University of Auckland’s Timothy Welch wrote earlier this year, the country would need to spend more than $100 billion if it is to modernise and upgrade its infrastructure.

Worryingly, Welch said this would double by 2030 if we didn’t get our act together.

To add insult to injury, local councils are by no means flush – and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon warned last Wednesday that the Government was in no mood to offer handouts.

Ratepayers too, struggling with the cost of living, can hardly come to the rescue.

Homeowners across the country face are already facing average rates increase of more than 14% this year. Many councils are planning further large rates increases in the coming years.

That is unlikely to touch the sides of the infrastructure deficit described by the likes of Welch.

For too long, this country has privileged short-term planning at the expense of longer-term thinking. Think of the years and $1.2 billion spent on the Three Waters policy before it was routinely scrapped with the change of Government.

Large-scale projects will never happen without more of a consensus approach – both at a local and national level.

Prepare for big stinks to brew and for more Cardinal West-type situations to foul the air.