Four commissioners find landfill poses “acceptable risk”
The hearing panel decision was not unanimous and was finally released on June 14, 11 weeks after the hearing closed.
Waste Management has cleared the first hurdle in its plan to build a regional landfill in the Dome Valley.
The Chinese-owned company was granted resource consent by four of the five commissioners on the hearing panel, which delivered its decision on Monday, June 14.
The four commissioners who granted the consent – Alan Watson, Wayne Donovan, David Mead and Michael Parsonson – were satisfied that subject to some amendments to the proposed conditions, the effects on the environment of the construction and operation of the new landfill were acceptable.
But such intangible cultural effects could not overwhelm the Resource Management Act, the National Policy Statement on freshwater, the Auckland Unitary Plan, Auckland Council s officials and four men sitting in judgment. An independent planning panel for Auckland Council has approved a 60-hectare landfill for a farm and bush site in the Dome Valley just south of Wellsford to take Auckland city s waste for the next 35 years.
Supplied Law over lore. The tangible over the intangible. A council expert who recommended the dump be approved later accepted at the hearing that there would be intangible adverse cultural effects, and only mana whenua can speak to mana whenua values .
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Clayden Road plan change allows for 1000 new homes
Auckland Council wanted to preserve three notable trees at 245 Matakana Road, but commissioners rejected the idea.
A plan change application allowing for more than 1000 new homes to be built on land either side of the new Matakana link road has been approved by commissioners, three months after a hearing in November.
The zoning change means more than 100 hectares of land north of Warkworth Showgrounds and west of Clayden Road will switch from its designation as future urban land with some light industry to mainly residential, with neighbourhood shops, open space and rural zones. Entry to the development would be via three access points on the link road, which would likely be controlled by traffic lights.