KEY POINTS:
Future generations of Aucklanders will be able to look back on the first week of April 2008 as something of a Green Letter day for the city. Not only was the 30-year struggle to protect the Waitakere Ranges foothills from "death by a thousand cuts" finally won, but a deal was finally struck with Chelsea Sugar to sell 36.7ha of its Waitemata Harbour clifftop property for a public park.
Thanks to the far-sightedness of previous generations, the core 10,000ha of the West Auckland mountain landmark has long been protected as parkland and water reserves. But the foothills have been increasingly vulnerable to suburban creep.
In the 1970s, New Lynn MP Jonathan Hunt tried to get legislation to control this encroachment, but failed, and ever since, locals such as Gary Taylor, Bob Harvey, John Edgar and many others have continued the fight.
Last week, a bill creating a 27,000ha Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area squeaked through Parliament with one vote to spare. It becomes law today. It doesn't prevent further development, but it will give local communities a bigger say in the development and subdivision of the 17,000ha of private land within the Heritage area.
The big concern is, will the National Party politicians, who voted against the bill, try to abolish it if they win this year's election?
In March 2005, when National's conservation spokesman, Nick Smith flew to Auckland to join public protests against the bill, he claimed it was designed to take private land by stealth to create reserves. He told the Herald: "I will not stand by silently if councils are going to abuse their powers over land owners and turn people's private land into parks." Of course, there was nothing in the bill to allow such thievery, but the scaremongering went down well with local developers and the like.
Amazingly, a year later, Dr Smith adopted just such a policy himself. In a speech to party faithful in May 2006, Dr Smith endorsed a proposal by his West Auckland colleague Paula Bennett. "Her idea of a National Park in the Waitakeres is a far better proposition than the fuzzy bill being promoted by [Waitakere City mayor] Bob Harvey."
He and Ms Bennett were still plugging their national park concept to the end. If they were ever to get their way, what then of the private property rights of the 21,000 people who'd be trapped inside this park?
Meanwhile, deep in the heart of urban Auckland, the somewhat shorter, 10-year dream of North Shore City Council parks chairman Tony Holman and his heritage-planner wife, Dinah, for an urban park stretching along the North Shore cliffs across the harbour from Herne Bay to Pt Chevalier, took a big step forward.
After lengthy negotiations between the sugar refiners, North Shore City, the Auckland Regional Council and the Historic Places Trust, 36.7ha of historic refinery park land will be sold to the Chelsea Park Trust for $20 million. In addition, agreement has been reached as to how the 14ha area refinery site will be disposed of, if the company subsequently moves out.
The Holmans' vision is of a great park - Uruamo - bringing together several contiguous areas of coastal forest, the Chelsea land, Kauri Point Centennial Park, Chatswood Reserve, Kauri Point Domain, and the neighbouring Defence Department munitions dump.
As a dedicated urban dweller, I confess my support for outlying regional parks is more ideological than physical. A good place for others to sport in. But the thought of one emerging along the inner harbour cliff-tops, a ferry trip from downtown Auckland, catches the imagination. A central ark for native birds appeals. And not just to me.
Back in 2003, Commodore David Anson told North Shore City councillors the navy was happy to share their 83ha munitions dump with the birds and the wetas and the lizards. He supported the idea of installing a predator-proof fence to augment the anti-human fence already in place around the armaments depot.
In anticipation, the Uruamo Ecological Society has been formed to raise the money for the fence, and then, to persuade some kiwis and other critters to share quarters with the navy's fireworks. But first they need the green light from Defence headquarters. Now that Chelsea's in the bag, what a good time to ask.
