KEY POINTS:
A new $195 million motorway is being plagued with graffiti even before it is finished, forcing the contractor to launch a campaign to "dob in the taggers".
Fulton Hogan, the lead contractor on the extension of State Highway 20 from Onehunga through Mt Roskill, has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars cleaning up graffiti on the project, which is due for completion next April.
It has put up 100 signs around the area this week, and plans to distribute fliers to 3000 households, urging people to ring the Auckland City Council's anti-tagging line 0800 STOP TAGS if they have any information that could help catch the taggers.
Site safety manager John Smith said he had been inspired by a Wellington City Council campaign which police say has cut tagging by 80 per cent in the capital's eastern suburbs by offering a $100 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Fulton Hogan is also offering a reward, but Mr Smith has yet to talk to the motorway's ultimate funder, the Government's Transport Agency, about how much can be paid.
"It's a cost to the taxpayer through the Transport Agency at the end of the day," he said.
He said the motorway had been dogged by graffiti since the day the project started in 2005.
Median barriers, sound-barrier walls and retaining walls built to look like slabs of natural rock have been covered with so much graffiti that a subcontractor has been brought in to spray them all regularly with a special film so tagging can be removed easily.
Steel panels on two new footbridges have been tagged so often the Transport Agency agreed to replace them with graffiti-proof mesh panels.
Fulton Hogan has had to repaint many of the new fences built for private homeowners who lost parts of their properties to the motorway.
Taggers have also targeted heavy machinery, much of it hired from other companies, forcing Fulton Hogan to repaint the equipment before returning it.
"One kid thought it would be fun to smash every window on every piece of plant in zone 3 [part of the 4km construction area], which cost us $60,000," Mr Smith said.
He said 24-hour security guards the company hired had helped police to catch some young offenders. Four youngsters, including the 13-year-old who caused the $60,000 damage, had been ordered to do community work cleaning up graffiti on the site.
"We turned those kids round ... They have become our eyes and ears because they live alongside."
Auckland City Council graffiti adviser Rob Shields said the council was working in partnership with Fulton Hogan and offered its own rewards for information, with amounts paid depending on the value of the information.
"We have the ability to pay considerably more than $100," he said.
But Mesepa Edwards of Mt Roskill's Waiata Artists Trust said her trust had been lobbying the council for years, without success, to get somewhere for young people in Mt Roskill to do something more constructive than tagging. "There is actually no facility for the youth in this area."
www.waiatatrust.co.nz
