Calls for single voice on open spaces

An environmental campaigner who has spent more than 10 years cleaning up city parks hopes a super city will bring a stronger, more unified approach to public open space.

Kit Howden has been fighting for public access through an area of rare plants and volcanic lava formations to a cycling and walking track on the Manukau foreshore.

Now he accepts much of the site will probably be filled and used as a depot by its trucking firm owner.

Mr Howden said a more co-ordinated approach by the councils could have secured the site for the public - and with it better access to the coast and nearby regional park.

He and the Mutukaroa Park Care group of volunteers have been planting native trees at Hamlins Hill Mutukaroa Regional Park for 10 years.

They want a public walkway through the wetlands at 791-3 Great South Road.

Auckland City Council has scheduled the area for protection under Plan Change 88, which lists ecologically significant areas in the city.

But the trucking company is challenging that scheduling in the Environment Court. It wants to lay gravel over about 4ha of the site, divert two waterways into culverts and remove some of the plants.

Mr Howden said the process had been difficult for volunteers and the site's owners, trucking company TR Group, because no single agency had responsibility for protecting the land.

"It's a classic case of little battles going on everywhere and there's no overall plan."

Auckland City Council spokeswoman Penny Pirritt said the council had considered buying the site but it was not a priority.

The council has agreed to a request by the company to rezone part of the land from open space to Business 6 - the zone for heavy, noxious or unpleasant industrial use.

The change was opposed by Auckland Regional Council and the Department of Conservation, which have until the middle of this month to appeal against the rezoning.

Mr Howden said he hoped to reach a compromise.

But he said a single, regional governing parks body might have been able to act more quickly.

An agreement with the landowner over public access was unlikely to be forthcoming until the zoning was sorted, said Ms Pirritt.

Local MP Carol Beaumont, who is meeting Mr Howden tomorrow to discuss public access, agreed the region needed greater co-ordination on community open space issues.

But she said a "super city" could mean the local community board, which was supportive of securing public access, would be axed.

The ARC will decide by April 14 whether to appeal the industrial zoning for the site.

DoC and TR Trucking did not return calls from the Herald.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry on Auckland Governance has recommended a single regional policy covering regional parks, the volcanic cones and parks "that served more than a local function".