KEY POINTS:
High on a west coast ridge south of Muriwai is a view to die for - untamed surf, black sand beaches, plunging rockfaces and bushclad headlands flanked by scenic reserve. Just the spot for the dream home on their 235ha farm, Anne and Mack Storey decided.
They went to the Rodney District Council and were granted building consent in April last year.
"We'd always had a dream of wanting to build a house on the farm," says Mack Storey, who bought the sheep and beef farm they call Parihoa nine years ago. In January, they started building.
"We chose the particular spot because it has a nice view of a little surf break and we're able to look down the farm - and it's not too far away from the farm buildings.
"The existing house is run down and the manager boards there as well."
But three weeks ago, as the timber framing neared completion, the Auckland Regional Council stopped the project in its tracks.
The council is seeking an urgent High Court review of Rodney's decision to allow the house to be built without calling for public comment. It is also seeking an Environment Court ruling that the house be pulled down.
"We find it almost incomprehensible that the ARC have weighed in when the house is under way," Storey says. "We're dumbfounded. We're having to go to a huge amount of expense and there's the possibility we could lose and all the money we've spent on the house would go down the tube. It certainly feels wrong."
Things may not be as black and white as the owners paint them. The ARC says work may have started without all the necessary consents and a covenant preventing subdivision clouds the picture.
But the main target in the ARC's sights is the district council. With all the palaver about saving unspoiled coastline from development, what was Rodney thinking?
The problem is the house's visibility - it can be seen from a coastal track between Bethells Beach (Te Henga) and Goldies Bush, marring unspoiled enjoyment of a landscape rated by the ARC as outstanding.
On the opposite coast near Clevedon, the ARC got in earlier to try to head off a 300-lot canal housing scheme near the mouth of the Wairoa River, which the Manukau City Council is considering.
The city council is deciding whether to approve a district plan change, having earlier adopted a private plan change sought by the developers.
Although the council maintains it has no firm view for or against, it has pencilled-in the proposed 300-lot "maritime village" in a future rural strategy document.
The Storey home and the 300-lot Wairoa "maritime village" are, potentially, just two more dominoes down in the long-running collapse of undeveloped coastline. Other, bigger, battlefields include:
* Ngunguru, east of Whangarei, where developers Landco want to build a 350-lot subdivision on a pristine estuary sandspit.
* Te Arai, south of Mangawhai, where Maori, teamed with a Queenstown-based developer, plan an 850-home subdivision behind an unspoiled ocean beach.
* Weiti, north of Long Bay, where Williams Capital wants Rodney to allow a 600-lot development where 150 lots are permitted.
* Ocean Beach, Hawkes Bay, where landowners plan to develop a 1000-lot seaside village and subdivide farms into lifestyle blocks.
From the Far North to the Wairarapa, and on the west coast, district councils have struggled under the Resource Management Act to manage demands on the coast.
MUCH as we wring our hands about it, those that can afford to grab their slice.
The RMA makes preservation of the natural character of the coastal environment - and its protection from inappropriate subdivision - a national priority. But it is also permissive, allowing "sustainable development" and treating proposals case-by-case.
The cumulative effects threaten a defining national attribute: baches replaced by mansions, beach settlements becoming suburbs; dunes lined with cul-de-sacs, once green headlands bedecked with houses.
"If you want to come up with a proposal you can run it through the system and things which people think should never fly do fly," says Environmental Defence Society chairman Gary Taylor.
The Government stepped in last month to prevent further subdivision on Crown land surrounding several South Island lakes (lakesides are treated as coast under the Resource Management Act).
The lakeside land was vulnerable under the tenure review process, which allows Crown pastoral leaseholders to negotiate freehold title to parts of their property if they transfer other parts to the Department of Conservation.
The Government plans to exclude from the process about 40 properties, covering 200,000ha, bordering lakes that include Tekapo, Wanaka and Wakatipu, upsetting farmers paying high rents on land with stunning views. But as the owner of nearly 2 million hectares of high country land, the Government can vary the rules to suit itself, whereas much of the coastline is privately owned.
The Government's ability to influence coastal development depends on the RMA - and the way the act is interpreted by local councils, who tend to encourage schemes that expand their rating base.
It has been obvious for a decade that the rules for managing coastal development either aren't working or are being ignored, yet moves to fix the problems have proceeded at a snail's pace.
In 2002, incoming Conservation Minister Chris Carter ordered an independent review of the coastal policy statement (CPS), the main mechanism to guide councils under the RMA.
In 2004, the review - by Dr Johanna Rosier of Massey University - found that the CPS was only partially effective in influencing district plans.
Rosier found that a lack of national leadership and direction had created a shroud of confusion at district level. She recommended a formal review but, with the RMA itself then under review, Carter opted to wait.
Finally, in March last year, Carter announced a formal review of issues concerning coastal development and the CPS. After initial responses by councils, a draft discussion document on a revised CPS will go to councils and iwi by the end of this month before wider consultation begins.
A board of inquiry will hear public submissions later this year and Carter hopes to have a new CPS in place before next year's election.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS fear the proposed changes won't go far enough. Instead of tinkering with the wording of the CPS, the Government needs to get much more prescriptive, says Taylor.
A hierarchy of national and regional policy statements is supposed to guide councils. On coastal land, the national CPS sits on top of regional policy statements and regional coastal plans (by regional councils), which district councils must follow. The Government made this clear last year in its review of the RMA, requiring councils to give effect to the CPS, whereas previously their decisions need only not be inconsistent with the CPS. The semantic shift wasn't enough.
The CPS spells out that coastal development should be concentrated in already compromised areas.
But councils have often found the fine print of the CPS to be vague and open to interpretation. Terms such as "special character" and "outstanding landscape" are thought to be loosely defined.
Councils and judges have been persuaded by developers and planning consultants that their scheme's special characteristics outweigh the cautions in the CPS and regional policy documents.
Raewyn Peart, senior policy analyst with the Environmental Defence Society, says many district councils are poorly resourced and have failed to do robust evaluations to identify outstanding landscapes which should be spared from development, those capable of sensitive development, and those suitable for intensive growth.
Some that tried, including Whangarei District Council, have run into strong opposition from farmers and other landowners.
Landowners have been able to gain additional subdivision rights in return for planting native trees or protecting bush elsewhere.
Conflicting court rulings have yet to produce reliable case law. Peart says the lengthy, expensive process of changing district plans is a further obstacle.
Most New Zealanders consider coastal farmland a natural landscape. But consultants have argued, and judges have accepted, that these are degraded landscapes which can be improved by subdivision - particularly where there is an offer to "return the landscape to its natural state" by planting native trees or making other enhancements.
Proponents of the Wairoa maritime village, for instance, describe the lower Clevedon valley as an already compromised landscape. They are offering public access to "a part of the Wairoa River where its meandering form and estuarine character give it particular interest". Planned wetland and native vegetation habitats would produce a "net conservation gain".
They note that the ARC's regional policy statement includes provision for a boat harbour and coastal living.
Only the margins of the site are identified as a regionally significant landscape, they told the plan change hearing which concluded in April.
The ARC maintains that the site is of relatively high natural character near an outstanding coastal landscape. The estuary is a rich feeding ground for thousands of birds.
Manukau's previous adoption of the private plan change for the canal housing proposal has raised claims of prejudice from opponents.
But the council says the move was merely technical and insists it is reserving judgment on the application. "There's a more than subtle difference between adopting and supporting," says acting city growth and planning manager Peter Reaburn.
But a background report commissioned by the council highlights the room for manoeuvre under the CPS.
Consultant planner Greg Osborne noted: "Many submitters ... have asserted that the plan change does not give effect to either the New Zealand coastal policy statement or the operative Auckland regional policy statement. "However, the council in adopting [the private plan change] clearly believed that it did ... the question is whether the natural character of this environment has already been so compromised by farming and other human activity that the preservation of natural character is outweighed by the benefits of the development."
The effectiveness of the coastal and regional policy statements will come under the spotlight again next month when the ARC asks the High Court to review Rodney's approval of Anne and Mack Storey's ridgetop house.
In an affidavit, ARC head of policy implementation Hugh Jarvis says that "although the proposal constitutes only one dwelling it is likely to have a noticeable impact on the recreational experience of the [Te Henga] walkway and its amenity and remote character".
The ARC believes Rodney failed to consider the CPS and its regional policy statement in granting land use consent and believes the proposal should have been notified for public input.
Rodney says it is disappointed in the ARC's intervention but cannot comment further ahead of the hearing.
GARY TAYLOR says the CPS - "as vague and imprecise as it may be" - has been largely ignored by councils. "The fatal flaw in the current set-up is the Crown has said protection of the coastline is a matter of national importance and then left it to local councils to interpret that and afford the protection."
Conservation Minister Carter is promising clearer wording and definitions in the revised CPS: "There will be clearer direction about what sort of habitat should be protected and what sort of open space should be maintained. The science has become much more advanced and regional councils are more active in doing environmental assessments. There are formulas to show how much open landscape is left in an area."
But don't hold your breath.
"It's about providing a framework, about not being too prescriptive and achieving effective outcomes."
