Brian Rudman: Chance for sanity to prevail over Puketutu Island

The campaign to make Puketutu Island a regional park got a major boost this week with the refusal of planning consent for a commercial composting plant on the Manukau Harbour island.

The proposed industrial facility would, said planning commissioners appointed by Manukau City and Auckland Regional Council, "compromise the high landscape values, amenity and character of Puketutu Island and the surrounding coastal environment," and was "not appropriate" in relation to the island's "unique landscape" and "regionally significant and cultural heritage values".

Granting consent "would be a retrograde step given the significant improvements that are occurring as part of the Project Manukau coastal and foreshore restoration plan ... " It would also introduce an urban activity to an area zoned rural both in regional and local plans.

The decision was hardly unexpected but no doubt still came as a blow to the applicant, Living Earth, which has already sold its existing composting site at Pikes Point and has to move by April 2007, and also to Puketutu owner, the Sir Henry Kelliher Charitable Trust, where they would have been rubbing their hands together in anticipation of a much-needed new income stream.

With the composting plant now blocked and mining royalties due to dry up when quarrying of the volcanic island comes to an end in 2008 or 2009, the future must be looking rather gloomy for the trustees.

I'm hoping it is anyway. So gloomy, in fact, that they're willing to reconsider their rejection in 2002 of Watercare Services' offer to buy the island.

Watercare, which operates the adjacent sewage treatment plant, had presented a win-win-win solution.

For the Kelliher Trust it was an offer of the market price for their main asset, which they could then go off and invest elsewhere.

Watercare would win by acquiring a huge hole in the ground - the quarry site - in which to deposit Auckland's processed biosolid waste for the next 40 years.

The third winner would be the people of Auckland. Part of the Watercare proposal was, and still is, to gift the island to Aucklanders as public parkland, the bulk of it, immediately.

The only obstacle to this perfect solution has been the Kelliher Trust, which clings to the hope of finding a new money-making venture centred on the island to replace the lost quarrying income.

In 1995, in submissions to the Manukau District Plan, the trust said mining would end in 2003 and be replaced with "a concept known as Puketutu Heritage Island" which would be developed over 10 years. This involved horse-riding stables, an art and cultural centre, a restaurant, tennis courts, an 18-hole golf course, travellers' accommodation and 24 additional residential units. The volcanic cones would be protected "by some form of heritage covenant".

Given that since 1958, several of the cones on this historic island, including the highest called Puketutu, had been carted away to form the base for the adjacent international airport runways, this was rather a hollow promise.

While the trustees had at least adopted the conservationist vocabulary of the times, they didn't take much notice of it. In 2001 they failed to object to a 10-year extension of quarrying on the island. Around the same time, plans for the heritage island concept were abandoned.

In 2002 Watercare offered to buy the island for a rumoured $5 million to $6 million. The trust rejected this. But it came back a while later with Living Earth founder, Rob Fenwick, in tow with a proposal that Watercare pay Living Earth and the trust between $35 and $50 a tonne to dispose of the biosolids.

Where would it go? Surprise surprise. Into the old quarry!

It was Watercare's turn to say no thanks. And there the future of Puketutu rested until the ill-fated compost plant plan surfaced.

Mr Fenwick has a proud record when it comes to green causes. But in this instance the brim of his composting hat is blocking his vision of the bigger conservation picture.

I can't imagine him proposing such an industrial plant on One Tree Hill, so why one on its Manukau Harbour sister volcano.

It's time to save what's left of our volcanic heritage - not continue to exploit it.

With the compost plant rejected we can only hope the Kelliher Trust dusts down the Watercare offer. I'm told it's still very much alive.

In doing so, trustees would earn much public gratitude. They'd also collect a healthy payout to invest elsewhere.