But Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins says he, along with other Dunedin city councillors, is acting in the best interests of the city.
Members of the Otokia Creek and Marsh Habitat Trust have been campaigning against the Dunedin City Council’s plan to build a new landfill at Smooth Hill, above Brighton.
They are "deeply concerned" about the timing of the council’s consent application with respect to the new freshwater regulations, believe the council’s consent application is incomplete, and are willing to go to the Environment Court to stop the council’s plans.
A branch of Otokia Creek, which flows to the coast at Brighton Beach, originates within the proposed landfill site where the council has applied for resource consent for the six million cubic metre landfill.
The new landfill site is in an area that includes "degraded wetland" of moderate ecological value, according to the city council’s ecological site assessment.
City council acting chief executive Sandy Graham has acknowledged that had the application been lodged a week later, it would not be acceptable due to new rules for the protection of wetlands that came into force on September 3.
Otokia trustee Simon Laing, of Brighton, said the way the project had progressed had disappointed many.
"I think many of us in Dunedin were buoyed by the election of a Green Party mayor.
"We all know we are borrowing the health of our waterways from generations to come and we had hoped that a Green-led council might share a similar outlook rather than trying to sneak through a closing door as the nation acts to treat freshwater resources responsibly."
Mr Hawkins yesterday was unapologetic.
"My membership of the Green Party, and their support of my election campaign, is irrelevant in this instance," Mr Hawkins said.
"We swear an oath as elected members to act in the best interests of our city as a whole, and that is what council has done."
Plans for the Smooth Hill landfill had been in place since the 1990s and were reconfirmed in a recent second generation district plan review, he said.
But Mr Laing said he believed the council had "for a very long time" failed to plan for the end of its existing Green Island landfill and now felt forced to push its Smooth Hill proposal through "no matter what".
"Not only the Otokia Trust, but many parties in our community are fully prepared to go to the Environment Court," Mr Laing said.
The trust yesterday wrote to the Otago Regional Council seeking notification of the consent application with full public consultation.
The letter, provided to the Otago Daily Times, stated the trust wanted to be considered an affected party.
It listed areas where the trust believed the city council’s consent application was incomplete, including that there was no adequate risk assessment for leachates leakage under climate change; no assessment was done on the use of Otokia Creek as a sole source of water for livestock; the assessment of social and economic effects was incomplete and the archaeological background study was irrelevant to the area and needed to be revised.
Trustee Viktoria Kahui, an ecological economist at the University of Otago, said she believed the consent application lacked a true cost-benefit analysis, including the cost of the perception of risk to the pristineness of the environment.
"I would not let my children swim in the river if I knew there was a landfill up there."
Ms Graham said council staff had been working on the consent application since last year with the aim of lodging it in August — a target date set before being aware of the new freshwater rules announced on August 5.
"Given work to date has been ongoing for over a year, and involves hundreds of pages of documents and many external experts, extra work to comply with the new ... rules would have required significant additional time and expense."
Lodging the consent application when it did meant the council had protected "the financial interests of the city’s ratepayers".
Ecologists for the council had also proposed steps to expand and enhance other wetlands in the surrounding area, she said.
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Comments
What a naive bunch.
Greens are all about what YOU should be doing to save the planet.
Of course they can break their own rules because it will be in YOUR best interests.
The main thing is that THEY will decide what those things are.
This is what happens when you look for savours in mortal flesh and elevate them to ideals they could never live up to instead of taking responsibility yourself, with guidance from thousands of years of history into human nature.
Just demonstrates what a con Party politics is at local government level. Hawkins is absolutely right. Once elected, your political Party affiliations have no relevance whatsoever to the decisions you make. Local government law requires you to act totally independently on a case by case basis in deciding what’s best for the city. You are supposed to take future generations into account though. I don’t think a majority on the DCC is doing that here. They just don’t want the hassle and expense of looking for another tip site. IMO thIs creek should have been protected when the Resource Management Act was introduced about 1990, a stuff up which has never been corrected.
"Hawkins yesterday was unapologetic.
"My membership of the Green Party, and their support of my election campaign, is irrelevant in this instance," Mr Hawkins said", shows the arrogance of the man and yes he has become a bit of a joke as instead of actually listening to the ratepayers he just goes off on his own ideological crusades.
"But Dunedin Mayor Aaron Hawkins says he, along with other Dunedin city councillors, is acting in the best interests of the city", yeah right, besides some greenie he is when he is pushing for another landfill instead of investigating what to do with the rubbish instead of dumping it.
It is not going to matter where they choose people are going to complain. Has anyone thought about their own personal responsibility in reducing the amount of rubbish that ends up at the tip. I see rubbish lying on roadsides and paths wherever I go and it has not got any better.
I agree about personal responsibility. Wish we would get tough like Singapore and SERIOUSLY punish fly-tippers, litterers (appalling, sad to see what people sitting in their cars at John Wilson Drive enjoying the ocean view dump out their car windows - time for CCTV cameras and scary penalties!).
But everything we buy comes in plastic. We should be pushing big polluting companies to have better solutions: McDonald's - their straws and plastic, non-degrading and dangerous-to-wildlife wrappers are all over St Kilda's sand dunes! Those companies should be shouldering responsibility for better packaging & clean-ups.
It's time for DCC (& Govt) to put energies into creating systems so we individually can easily minimise the waste in households e.g. DCC providing household composters; Big Garbage Days where households put out large items ... others get to sift through & take what they want from the curbside ... & council picks up what's left (I've seen in other countries that a lot gets taken to be reused by needy people).
Another "Be a Tidy Kiwi" national campaign would be great - to educate & shame litterers; to encourage people to consciously aim to decrease their garbage.
Just shows the absolute hipocracy of the greens in our current climate.
In one hand we have a green mayor willing to wreck natural features to suit a perceived need, throwing out all of his green ideology for his lack of leadership and vision, and around the same time as we have a green party co-leader breaking away from the party policy and allowing the government to fund a private school to the tune of $11million.
It's funny how the council guys then call out it'll cost more to do it differently, as if they really care about wasting tax payer and ratepayer monies as they all feed from the trough.
hardly a green thinker more like a national party supporter with a green tinge /and this is the problem with our local authorities - they get to make law and rules 10 yrs - 35 yrs ahead of their time. science has shown anytime a landfill operates close to wetlands when the weather gets extreme that landfill somehow ends up with half the rubbish in the water. shameful as shameful as their annual plan and waste minimisation - where was that consultation ? where were we told that they were minimising our waste services? on annual plan day where they give u 5mins to have your say? i think we can do better.
Come on, why should this group of people be any different than most of the rest in being disappointed with Mr Hawkins? He was elected without any ideas other than close roads and try to stop cars. And his track record as councillor and mayor has brilliantly proven that.
If anyone wanted Dunedin to prosper, maybe even grow, then you could only be disappointed that Dunedin has such a person and team as Mr Hawkins and his Greens mates.
The Green Party should terminate Mr Hawkins' membership. I believe he is actually now doing more harm than good for the environment. His lack of leadership skills, inconsistent and at times hypocritical stance on environmental issues is only helping to give a bad name to all environmentalists.
It would seem most of the council and indeed the Mayor missed the "swearing of the oath" to do what's best for the city ceremony.
The consultation and scoping for a site was done DECADES ago. Knowledge has progressed. The scientific knowledge the DCC based decision-making on was inferior. The environmental issues facing us were not yet discovered. The knowledge of historic, significant Maori use of that land was unknown (by DCC). Archaeological discoveries had not been made then.
We now know this site is wrong for a dump. It would be an injustice that future (and current) generations would curse council for. Council members would be judged as being on the wrong side of history if they force through their decades-old "old science" decision and ruin an ecologically special and treasured area to become a dump.
New, meaningful, and wide-ranging consultation and decision-making is necessary.
A different site needs to be found. A site that has already been degraded, probably. How about Burnside, where abattoirs have sat, where they have polluted for 100+ years.
Meaningful, wide-ranging consultation is necessary. We need our council to create new ways to minimise our garbage production. Yes, individuals can try. But really, it takes institutional rules & systems to minimise the massive garbage pile Dunedin creates & buries on our beautiful land. That's where DCC can really make a difference & lead the way.
Better garbage disposal methods need to be researched & implemented with urgency. E.g Builders & renovators just dumping all house interiors at the dump. That's wrong. Rules should be: those housing parts to be repurposed, put on "free" websites and temporary sites for people with less money to do renos with.
Aim for a "donut" economy - so builders&people have responsibility & easy channels 4 finding reuses, new business.
"Big Rubbish" days: households put their big items out to be collected - & other people can pick them up for free to use.
DCC should provide each house a vermin-proof composter to shrink the mountains of food waste dumped.
Please press PAUSE on dump site! Consult meaningfully. Find systems solutions. Protect our land.
The whole city feels let down by A ron.