KEY POINTS:
Why does Auckland City continue to act as though the only volcanic cone worth fussing over is the one that the mayor lives next door to - Mt Eden?
If the city bosses were serious about protecting this heritage, it's past time they gave quality time to the working-class cones as well. Particularly Mt Wellington, which is under threat from the city's own planning department.
A few weeks ago, I suggested it was time the city's new volcano department stop obsessing about Mt Eden and refocused on the bigger picture. Two reports underline this need for change.
One was a back-slapping press release announcing public consultation was to begin over plans to upgrade the Mt Eden visitor experience and seeking opinion on everything from the style of visitor centre to the best sort of electric train to ferry lazy sightseers.
The other document, initially on the confidential agenda, outlined to the urban strategy and governance committee how council planners and private property developers Landco were trying to ring-fence the Environment Court's concerns about how the planned Mt Wellington Quarry redevelopment would detrimentally affect the neighbouring volcano.
In his May 4 interim decision on the rezoning of the 110ha site, Judge Craig Thompson said the planned housing and commercial development abutting the base of the northern side of the mountain was unacceptable and developers and the council had to come back with a revised plan recognising Auckland Volcanic Cones Society's concerns.
The society had argued that this was one of the few sites left where a cone was not surrounded by houses or industrial development. Judge Thompson agreed, talking of the value to residents and visitors of seeing the cone emerge from ground level rather than from behind a row of houses.
In their response to the judge, the council and Landco have agreed to remove two residential sites at the end of Gollam Rd but want the major area of contention to be ring-fenced in order for the parties to consider options for the area. In other words, they want the court to give the green light for the huge surrounding development and put the little matter of what happens on the interface of the volcano away in a filing cabinet for later consideration.
Of course that would suit the developer down to the ground but it seems idiotic behaviour for a council claiming to be dedicated to protecting our volcanic landscape.
Auckland City should never have agreed to the proposal to plant three-storey, terraced housing along the slope of the volcano in the first place.
Judge Thompson gave the city a second chance to do the right thing and what is it now doing? Throwing away its key bargaining chip - the ability to delay.
The report says Landco wants up to six months to survey the site and suggests that no development is an option. From what the judge said, the council should have taken the hint and decided it was the only option, full stop.
What's now being proposed seems insane. Because the strip in question is an old quarry site covered by fill, and unlikely to provide a stable base for development or reserve use, Landco proposes to remove it before a survey is undertaken.
But it's covered by fill. The 1915 act to protect Auckland's volcanoes insist that where quarrying has occurred, vertical cuts have to be battered back with fill to recreate the visual appearance destroyed by quarrying. This is the landscape amenity the judge said had to be protected. As does the 1915 act.
Yet now we have the city council going along with a proposal to remove the prosthetic slope and show, once more, the ugly scar. Don't they realise that thanks to the 1915 act, if they remove the fill to see what's underneath they're going to have to put it all back afterwards?
Retired Auckland Museum ethnologist David Simmons said that around 1960, the old Mt Wellington Borough Council had plans to gentrify the vertical scar left from quarrying on the other side of the mountain. The Archaeological Association argued that the 1915 act required it to recreate a slope by battering with fill. This the council did. Obviously, the same thing happened when quarrying ceased at the strip under discussion. There's no need for ring-fencing it now. Just leave the mountain be.
