Motorway hearing gives agency a smack

An architect's impression of an air vent for the Waterview tunnel connection for State Highway 20. Photo / Supplied

Consent hearings for Auckland's $1.7 billion Waterview motorway proposal have closed on a sour note for the Transport Agency.

Environment Court Judge Laurie Newhook, chairman of a five-member board of inquiry into New Zealand's largest transport project, ended 16 days of public hearings on Friday by commending those involved - more than 250 submitters and dozens of technical experts - for a "highly constructive atmosphere".

But Judge Newhook took exception earlier to what an opposing lawyer complained was an attempt by the Transport Agency to introduce new evidence as an appendix to 143 pages of closing legal submissions.

Douglas Allan, representing a coalition including Living Communities and the Northwestern Community Association, said there was no opportunity to test the document in cross-examination and the board "should give it no weight at all".

Judge Newhook said that seemed a generous suggestion, as his impulse was to refuse to read the document, which purported to outline the project's economic benefits to local communities likely to be hit hardest.

He said the board had granted considerable leeway to all parties, particularly the Transport Agency, to gain answers to many issues raised in voluminous evidence and it would be a significant departure from natural justice to allow the new material to stand.

He and his four fellow board members made a dramatic show of ripping the appendix from each of their copies of the agency's submissions and handing them to a registrar for destruction.

Agency lawyer Suzanne Janissen later volunteered to remove a second appendix, listing open spaces which would remain available to local communities after the project's completion in late 2016, when the Transport Agency hopes to have a partly-tunnelled 4.5km motorway connection through Waterview and a widened Northwestern Motorway.

Board members also took exception to a list of what Ms Janissen labelled as local benefits from the project, including upgraded facilities at Waterview Primary School, which will be next to tunnel portals and a 15m to 25m vehicle emissions stack.

Assisting agency lawyer Cameron Law said many improvements to the school, such as remodelled classrooms, solar panels and an upgraded public address system, went beyond specific mitigations measures for negative impacts of the project.

But Judge Newhook said he understood the purpose of the package was to mitigate community perceptions that the school was suffering from the proximity of the project and "to remove the negative effects on the school roll".

"I am not inclined to see a lot of lolly in it," he said.

He accepted the project may provide some additional benefits elsewhere along its route, such as stormwater treatment from an upgrade of the Northwestern Motorway's causeway, from which pollution has been allowed to run untreated into the Waitemata Harbour since it was built in 1952.

But he indicated strong concern at the end of the hearings about the location of a construction yard - one of 10 proposed along the project's route - over almost 2000sq m of land "hard-up against a highly sensitive water view - Oakley Creek".