KEY POINTS:
In 40 years, tourists arriving in Auckland, world heritage city of volcanoes, will be able to peer from their plane window as they come into land, at the city's newest cone - Pooketutu.
A world first. A mountain carefully moulded from human "biosolids," into the shape of the original volcanic cone, destroyed 80 years earlier to provide fill for the airport runway.
The conservation-minded amongst them might well be impressed. So too, the students of the bizarre. As for the rest, well, I hope the Auckland Regional Authority ties up the copyright on all postcard imagery. Cards should be in great demand, as every Aucklander will have contributed to the re-creation of Puketutu. Why shouldn't the regional coffers reap the rewards?
Don't get me wrong, I think the just-announced deal over the future of Manukau Harbour's Puketutu Island is brilliant - if only because it brings the 200ha waterfront island into public ownership as a regional park, protecting it from further destruction or commercial exploitation.
But the deal does much more. It solves the problem of how to dispose of the 4.5 million tonnes or more of biosolids Aucklanders will flush through the sewers over the next 30 years.
Instead of upwards of 40 or so articulated truckloads of the treated stuff trundling out of the Mangere Treatment Plant each day and through the streets of suburbia to some, as yet undiscovered, landfill site, the material can make the short trip across the causeway to the huge excavation crater created by half a century of quarrying.
Whether it's piped across in slurry form, or by some form of conveyer belt, or just trucked has not been decided. What is certain is that any of these is less environmentally intrusive than trucking the waste out across the region.
If that's not enough good news, Watercare Services, the public facility that has brokered this $25 million deal with the present owners, Kelliher Charitable Trust, will hand ownership of the island to the Auckland Regional Council for use as a regional park.
Adjacent as it is to the Manukau City historic coastal stonefields parklands, Aucklanders will end up with a great isthmus park on the Manukau Harbour, just a short drive from the homes of half the region's population.
This has long been a dream of Watercare chief executive Mark Ford. I recall him quietly lobbying for it in 2000 when thoughts were belatedly turning to possible millennium projects for Auckland. We all missed that boat, as usual, but Mr Ford has quietly kept up the pressure.
Now the deal has been done, he's remained in the background, but if it's anyone's victory, it's his.
All that remains is for Watercare to obtain the necessary resource consents from Manukau City Council and Auckland Regional Council. I guess the independent commissioners could always say no. But so far, I've heard of no one lining up to oppose it.
Only one fly remains in this otherwise ideal ointment. That's compost maker Living Earth's determination to use part of Puketutu Island to compost upwards of 75,000 tonnes of garden waste a year for the next 10 years.
The Environment Court granted Living Earth a resource consent for the activity despite the vigorous opposition of Watercare and Manukau City and Auckland Regional councils. The ARC has appealed against that decision.
The happy ending to this tale would be for Living Earth to voluntarily abandon its plans for the island and let it become the regional park we all want it to be.
My understanding is that Manukau and Waitakere City have offered Living Earth alternative sites.
In Waitakere's case, the proposal includes the suggested expansion of the modern "in vessel" composting system that city uses.
Such indoor composting is the 21st century solution that the region needs, not the antiquated outdoor, machine-turning system proposed for Puketutu.
With such a good solution at Puketutu in the region's grasp, everyone involved needs to get together - and that includes Living Earth - and come up with the right answer.
