KEY POINTS:
Michele Perwick, the consultant planner hired by Auckland City to review plans for a 146-apartment development atop the crater edge of Orakei Basin, says that Government plans to seek world heritage status for the Auckland volcanic field are "not a relevant consideration" because of "uncertainties" over timing.
What a shame no one seems to have pointed out to her that seeking world heritage status for Orakei Basin and the region's 50 or so other cones was not just a mission of the Crown, it is also enshrined in Auckland City's own planning documents.
But no doubt if someone had, she would have exercised a Jesuitical wriggle and found some other line of reasoning for justifying surrendering this cone to the bulldozers.
My beef's not in particular with Ms Perwick. She's just another cog in the wheel of officialdom that seems to be dedicated to finding ways of arguing black is white when it comes to preserving our unique geological treasures.
In November, I bemoaned the fate of a similar South Auckland landmark, the Pukekiwiriki Crater on the edge of the Tamaki River, next to the new Highbrook Business Park, East Tamaki.
There, a presumably well-meaning developer has "improved" on nature, by planting a three-deep ring of Norfolk Pines right around the tuff ring crater rim. All with the blessing of Manukau City and Auckland Regional Council officialdom.
Not only will the fantastic view to other peaks from the crater rim soon be obliterated, so will the special feel and form of this unique ground level volcano. Now it's the turn of the much more famous Orakei Basin to face further indignities. And this with the blessing of Auckland City bureaucrats and the Ngati Whatua landowners, who have leased the land to developer Tony Gapes.
At a protest meeting held a year ago, soon after this residential development had been announced, John Banks, now Auckland mayor, criticised Mr Gapes - also builder of the downtown waterfront Scene apartment blocks - as having some of the worst developments in Auckland to his name. Aaron Bhatnagar, later elected a local councillor, called the Orakei plans, "East Germany by the sea".
But even if this development was from the trendiest designer boards in the world, plonking five-storey and seven-storey apartment blocks on this unique volcanic peninsula would be wrong.
The developers and their apologists are arguing that because the area has already been "substantially modified" by the rail causeway and industrial development, the "integrity of this site" has already been damaged and detracted. But that's an excuse for doing nothing.
Geological Society president Dr Bruce Hayward says the basin is one of Auckland's more important volcanoes and "arguably the city's best preserved example of a tuff cone with a wide, water-filled crater". Experts also claim it's a valuable historic pa site, though the Ngati Whatua owners seem remarkably unconcerned by this.
It is scheduled in the city district plan as a "geological feature" for its "historic/cultural, scientific/educational and visual amenity values". The city also acknowledges that as a volcanic feature, it is subject to the provisions of the 1915 act prohibiting further excavation of the volcanoes.
Yet in her report, Ms Perwick goes along with the city's senior heritage adviser, George Farrant, who says the proposed excavations are "notably minor, especially in comparison to the depredations of past excavations and filling activities on and near the site".
The argument seems to be, that as long as the developer ravishes the poor victim rather less brutally than the rapist before, we'll give you a green light - and if you clean up nicely afterwards, we'll give you a pat on the back as well.
In recent years there's been increased concern at protecting what's left of our volcanic heritage. The latest proposed changes to the Auckland Regional Policy Statement, released in October, aim to strengthen the protection afforded the volcanoes, including Orakei Basin, "in recognition of their international, national and regional significance ... " The objective is "on the avoidance of the adverse effects of activities such as buildings, structures and earthworks or land disturbance that are physically or visually intrusive".
The officials have already set a sorry precedent by nodding an adjacent Gapes development through without a hearing last year. When will the slow chipping away at the cones finally end?
