Tunnels spark 'ghetto' fear

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

Adequate recreational facilities are needed to prevent two Auckland communities from being left as ghettos by the Transport Agency's $1.7 billion motorways project, a board of inquiry hearing was told yesterday.

Waterview resident Rob Black said the project had the potential to "ghettoise" both his community and that of Owairaka, at the other end of a pair of motorway tunnels, unless adequate mitigation was provided for all age groups.

He said both communities had the highest deprivation rating in a five-point system contained in an atlas compiled in 2006 of socioeconomic deprivation, which weighed up variables such as high offending, victimisation, morbidity and mortality rates.

"This project has the potential to reinforce or compound the powerlessness and learned helplessness that all age groups living in poverty can experience," said Mr Black, who has lived in Waterview for 15 years and served on the local primary school's board of trustees.

He said that 80 to 90 per cent of his children's classmates did not leave Waterview during school holidays.

"The most common story or comments about what children did in their holiday was going to the park," he said. "This is why the open spaces and parks are so valuable."

Although 2.5km of a 4.5km stretch of new motorway will be tunnelled, a surface section will occupy much of a green belt through Owairaka including Alan Wood Reserve, and four large ramps, ventilation buildings and a 15m to 25m emissions tower next to the school will dominate Waterview.

The Transport Agency is offering to reconfigure Waterview Reserve next to a proposed enlarged interchange with the Northwestern Motorway and to provide two new sports fields in what was previously planned as a housing development in Valonia St at the southeastern end of the Owairaka green belt.

But the Auckland Council does not favour developing facilities which Mr Black says are needed at Waterview Reserve, such as a skateboard park, and is instead negotiating with the agency for a financial contribution to upgrading fields next to the Metro Mt Albert Sports Club in Phyllis Reserve.

The Phyllis Reserve proposal was supported at the hearing yesterday by Auckland Football Federation chief executive David Parker, who pointed to a shortage of playing space in Mt Albert even before the proposed loss to the motorway of 3 fields in Alan Wood Reserve.

Ministry of Education lawyer Katia Fraser outlined mitigation measures which she said the Transport Agency had agreed to provide Waterview Primary School, which she also represented.

These included moving junior classrooms - which are now just 45m from the proposed site of the tunnels' northern ventilation stack - to the other end of the school, extending its hall to accommodate a larger community room, insulating and ventilating all inhabited buildings, upgrading data connections and providing solar panels.

The kindergarten, which is even closer to the stack site, will also be moved around the corner to Oakley Ave.

But Mr Black said Waterview residents were strongly in favour of moving the stack.