Puketutu - Not a Dump for BioSolids - So Far

On the 9th July 2009, independent commissioners - chaired by Leigh McGregor, declined Watercare's applications for consents needed to dispose of sewage biosolids into the quarry hole that will be left on Puketutu Island when Winstone Aggregates finish their rock quarrying operation there. I breathed a sigh of appreciation.

There is a god....

This project - continuously referred to as a "land rehabilitation" by Watercare - has been around for a while. ARC has been dragged into it - reluctantly as far as I am concerned, willingly as far as some others are concerned - because the temptation of a free regional park was dangled in front of it. Like this: Watercare buys the Island and uses a chunk of it as a biosolids dump, and ARC can have the balance for a regional park immediately, and the whole of it for park when the quarry hole is fully "rehabilitated"....

Stank, as far as I was concerned.

Made me think of Goebbels. He used to say, " if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth." Felt the same to me, the use of the word "rehabilitation" to describe the dumping of partly processed human sewage as a "beneficial use" of this material, as a good way of "rehabilitating" this hole in the Island.

Anyway, this picture comes from Watercare's website and is an aerial view of Puketutu. To the right, you can see the edge of watercare's Mangere Wastewater treatment plant. The sort of triangle area, also to the right, is the current Pond 2 Landfill site used to deposit biosolids now. It's capacity is to 2012 or thereabouts...
And, this picture shows Puketutu in the middle distance. The picture is taken from Mangere Mountain. In the background you can see the Waitakere's. And the Manukau Harbour is the water you can see. None of these pictures give a good idea of the topography of Puketutu. It is steep and undulating, and is about 140 hectares in area. It would make a fanatastic park. Views from it toward Manukau Heads are great. But please hold the biosolids...

I guess the decision will be appealed. But it must help push Watercare in a different direction. And about time. It's a worry with Watercare being supported as the vertically integrated entity in charge of all of Auckland's 3-waters, if it so resolute about least cost, business friendly approaches to water.

To quote summarised reasons for the decision to decline:

"...(a) There would be severe and irreversible adverse effects on the spiritual and cultural wellbeing and values of tangata whenua and their ancestral relationship with the Island if this proposal was permitted to proceed;
(b) The proposal would have adverse effects on the natural character of the coastal environment and the cultural values of tangata whenua which are both matters of national importance and of regional significance. Therse effects could not be adequately avoided, remedied or mitigated and in the case of iwi values would be irreversible;
(c) The properties of the biosolids are far from favourable, and will restrict the landform to a very flat, distinctly unnatural appearance, with prolonged and intrusive aftercare likely to be required;
(d) In purely physical terms consent to the proposal might be granted, subject in all respects to the imposition of appropriate conditions. However, the purely physical considerations are considered to be far outweighed by the significant adverse effects that would be caused for matters of national and regional importance;
(e) The disposal of biosolids is not an appropriate way to "rehabilitate" Puketutu Island: it will degrade the island environmentally and leave it in a worse state than that prior to its "rehabilitation"..... etc

Just as an end note to this posting, I note that Auckland's wastewater system needs a policy upgrade. For a start the "trade waste" option of tipping heavy metals etc into the sewer, in exchange for a nominal trade waste fee, must be stopped. Sydney Water stopped this practice almost 20 years ago. Their goal was to reduce the heavy metal contaminants that render biosolids dangerous to life and healthy land. Stopping trade wastes would begin the slow process of creating a better quality organic biosolids that is more likely to be composted usefully with greenwaste and used as a soil conditioner. I appreciate there are challenges with this. But it is becoming the Western world norm to genuinely reuse biosolids, and to recycle their organic content back into the ground.

Royal Commissars or Royal Commissioners?

This blog was inspired, among other things, by comments made by Margaret Bazley when she was interviewed on National Radio last week. She spoke long and hard about pre-school service provision in South Auckland. She passionately advocated for the whole of the Royal Commission's recommendations to be implemented. Every one. That all of the commissioners had agreed 100% with every one of its over 100 recommendations....

Didn't sound that credible. Bit over the top. Not very practical. Alarm bells went off....

So I had a quick read of its 788 pages. Not every word you understand, but enough to form an opinion that this whole thing is a bugger's muddle, that it's a stuff up. So this blog is a bit of a reprise on how we got here, but mostly it's about what the commissioners have done. First a bit of background....

How we got a Royal Commission

Several quite different political initiatives have led to the New Zealand Government decision that a Royal Commission was needed to: "receive representation upon, inquire into, investigate, and report on the local government arrangements (including institutions, mechanisms, and processes) that are required in the Auckland region over the foreseeable future…"

For example, since 2005, Manukau and Waitakere City Councils have sought to have the powers of the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) reduced in regard to the ARC’s ability to set the Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL). Frustration at not being able to act independently and rezone rural land for Greenfield development partly inspired the so-called "Auckland Mayoral Coup" in 2006 which was led by all four city mayors, and which sought to replace the elected ARC with themselves, selected businessmen, govt officials and the Minister for Auckland Issues. The mayors proposed a 'Lord Mayor' who was to be elected from across the whole region.

Countering this initiative, elected councillors advocating for sustainable development, and seeking compact urban development and more energy efficient land use patterns, called for a stronger and more independent regional government, with the power to implement regional strategies such as the Growth Strategy, the Auckland Sustainability Framework, and the Regional Land Transport Strategy.

Business interests in Auckland, frustrated by matters including transport congestion, delays in the completion of the state highway network, and reports about shortages in land supply for commercial development, called for greater involvement in Auckland governance of business leaders. Some went so far as to suggest the whole of Auckland’s local governance should be in the hands of a Commission run by government appointed commissioners.

Also in 2006 the Metro Project, run from the ARC’s Auckland Regional Economic Development Office (AREDO), commissioned an International Review Team to undertake a visit and review of Auckland and to comment on a series of background papers prepared for the Metro Auckland Project team. The review partners included Auckland business interests, central government departments, academics, and local government representatives. The "Metro Report" made a number of recommendations relating to Auckland’s governance and other matters that attracted the interest of Central Government.

And for the past few years there have been numerous public debates about who should be responsible for the funding and political management of Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra, Motat, and other regional amenities.

These were among the most significant calls for change to Auckland’s governance arrangements. And so the previous Labour-led Government set up a Royal Commission to look into it. The Commission was also told to incorporate the findings of the Rating Review. David Shand was also on this. In my opinion, the Rating Review was a peculiar and unbalanced piece of work. You can read my analysis of it at: http://www.joelcayford.com/arc.htm#q6 (The Ups and Downs of the Rating Review)....

What the Royal Commission wrote

I'm not going into every last bit here. This is not a comprehensive analysis. But it is a strategic one. First thing that struck me was how wide-ranging the commissioners have gone with their review. Hardly a stone left unturned. For example they are even pulling Government into Auckland with an Auckland Cabinet Committee - apparently essential to the whole thing. The report's Part 3: Vision for Auckland, starts well enough with chapters on vision, economic development, environment, urban design & heritage. But then there's a doozey of a chapter - social wellbeing - that runs for 70 pages. Social well-being makes up half of the Royal Commission's vision for Auckland..... My bet is this is Margaret Bazley's chapter. It's the issue she really went into bat for on radio. I accept that Auckland has social issues, and that it's a tale of several cities, and that Manukau has different issues to deal with than North Shore. I also accept that these differences affect the priorities of each Council. But Central Government and taxation play the main role in health, education and social well-being matters and related service provision. While these matters need to be born in mind for Auckland local government, they are not core local government services. The line needs to be drawn - otherwise we'll all be trying to do everything.

Then we get into Part 4: Structural Reform. This part really shows up the weakness or inappropriateness of what the Royal Commission has done. This section sets out the Guiding Principles for Shaping Auckland Governance. These are said to be: common identity and purpose; effectiveness; transparency and accountability; responsiveness. Nowhere a mention of practicality or implementability. And this, I think, is at the heart of why this Royal Commission has served up a crock. Rather than follow the guidance and direction that underpinned its terms of reference, the Royal Commission has gone right back to first principles, it has thrown all of the local government toys out of the cot, and then - from scratch, a tabla rasa approach - tried to put it all back together. But they haven't gone the whole hog - which is what ARC was recommending (and which I strongly opposed, talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater). They've gone part of the way.

The Royal Commission's recommendations fall between the perfect "start from scratch ideal", and the "quick and do-able dirty", and that's why it fail on many counts. Recommendations must pass the test of being practical and implementable. Because this is not a perfect world. That should have been a principle for the Royal Commission. It is astounding to me that it was not.

But then we have Part 5: Practical Solutions to Pressing Problems. Sounds good, but it's already too late. Royal Commission had already decided that being practical and putting forward recommendations that passed an implementation test - was not to be on of its principles. It's in Part 5 that we can find the Peter Salmon Chapter, and the David Shand Chapter. The Hon Peter Salmon had a lot to do with crafting the Resource Management Act. Chapter 24 - Planning for Auckland - is RMA specific. It makes no mention of the role of the Local Government Act - which is more about planning for what we do want. It introduces an extremely powerful planning tool called Development Levies. This chapter is written as if the LGA did not exist. It does not do the notion of integrated planning any favours.

Also in Part 5 we have what I regard as the David Shand chapter. Chapter 26, The Three Waters. To my eye, this chapter has been pretty much lifted out of his Rating Review report. At 43 pages, it is nearly twice as long as the chapter on transport. Sadly, I couldn't find a chapter that seriously dealt with the pressing issue of how to properly integrate land use and transport planning, and to deliver more sustainable and energy efficient land use development.

The Royal Commission's view of Community Engagement

At page 296 etc, the Royal Commission sweepingly states that "community engagement is poor...". In my experience the best community engagement that I have seen in my 12 years of local government has been driven by community boards. And it has been far from poor. I have written about this elsewhere. I also believe that North Shore City's engagement with its community over the need to clean up its wastewater network and systems, was exemplary. Indeed I am aware that this work has attracted international attention. And based on this sweeping incorrect generalisation, the Royal Commission abolishes Community Boards.

End Note

I'll leave you to make what you will of the plethora of recommendations made, and the extent to which they match up with the reason Auckland got into this. But I think the Royal Commission took far more rope than was given, Commissioners pursued their own hobby horses individually, and they did not produce a coherent and practical set of implementable recommendations. I just hope that Auckland, and Central Government, are wise enough to ensure that Auckland is not hanged by them.