Opinion: Opportunity lost with industrial development in Whanganui

Graham and Lyn Pearson see the Mill Rd industrial estate as an ecological opportunity lost. Photo / Paul Brooks

OPINION

Believing Whanganui is one of New Zealand's most beautiful cities and has leading-edge strategies, we have been disappointed in a local development.

Using the Manuka St-Mill-Mosston Rd connection to and from Castlecliff regularly, we have watched developments here with some anxiety.

This may be a great place to develop an industrial estate and John Dakin of Goodman Property Trust tells us in the Chronicle (January 12) that there is need for more quality warehouses.

However, in this development there appears to be little consideration for the previous natural state of this area, especially in relation to stormwater hydraulics.
There is a lost opportunity here.

Whanganui is a town established on an important river delta.

This means that in many places where rivers and streams used to run, there are still dips and hollows that become natural water reservoirs during heavy rain events.

Water being able to collect in these areas helps prevent flooding, has a cooling modification on local climate, increases filtration thus reducing contamination of the receiving water, all of which better support water life.

It is crazy, especially in the Mill Rd areas, that the ability for natural water storage to remain has been lost.

Instead, we see the development of hard ground surfaces and roofed areas: impervious areas, which encourage runoff and tend to lead to flooding in storm events.

There is also little consideration of landscaping, footpaths, cycleways, and bus stops being developed in the area while the pukeko population is remembered in a road sign.

We thought planning for a future where cars are not the only possible transport and where rain gardens, green rooves, ponds and other water collection systems are compulsory is a Leading-Edge way to go.

We know workers from Heads Rd industrial area eat their lunches beside the yacht club on the awa (an area that also needs some thought about rubbish and recycling bins and seating).

Development of a park-like lunch area in Mill Rd for the workers should have been part of the development plan.

Collecting rainwater already available, in tanks could have been used to keep landscaping fresh and green, as well as for water in emergency situations.

However, planning in this area seems to be just using the same old, same old methods of past generations and doing nothing to encourage us to think of adapting to living with a continually warming planet.

We must move away from the legacy of just conveying stormwater to our awa and other water reserves in the quickest possible way. Increasing velocities leads to increasing storm events with increased erosion and makes the area the water comes from drier in the summer months.

Sending water through pipes is a way to further warm it and the water into which it arrives! Not good for a warming planet.

We need to stop seeing stormwater as a problem and start seeing it as a resource! With the trust "aiming to build all new warehouses to a five-star green standard and to offset any unavoidable embedded carbon" we know Whanganui District planning regulations need upgrading. All that's left of the pukeko who lived there is a road sign!

We don't have to invent these ideas when we know places such as Auckland have produced documents and Canberra and the city of Vancouver are living them.

Other places in Whanganui even have rain gardens and a workshop that collect its rainwater. Are we going backwards or forwards here?

• Lyn and Graham Pearson who live in Castlecliff, are actively involved in Castlecliff Coast Care and other local environmental initiatives.