Brian Rudman: Compost king faces steep battle over Puketutu

The rescue of Mt Roskill from the bulldozers last year came about despite the gutlessness of the local authorities supposed to be protecting Auckland's volcanic cones. But the victory does seem to have shamed politicians into taking more seriously their role as custodians of our unique landscape.

Take Puketutu Island, the Rangitoto of Manukau Harbour until airport builders blasted most of its unique archaeological and geological features into hardfill for nearby runways.

As recently as four years ago, the despoliation continued, with the Auckland Regional Council and Manukau City approving a 10-year extension to the quarrying. This despite high-minded blather in both councils' mission statements about protecting volcanic heritage sites.

Post-Mt Roskill, though, attitudes have changed. On Wednesday a joint regional council-Manukau City resource consent hearing begins into an application from Living Earth to transfer its green waste composting business from Pikes Pt, Onehunga, across to Puketutu.

Both councils are opposing the application because of the adverse effects the composting will have on such things as the island's environment, natural character, landscape, heritage and amenity values. The regional council is also objecting to an industrial activity taking place in a rural zone.

In applauding the councils' new-found concern for this heritage site, one can't help sympathising with compost king Rob Fenwick's incredulity that the ARC can allow quarrying, but oppose a composting project that the ARC's own submission praises as doing a great job for the region.

The problem with this week's hearing is that the focus will be on the rights and wrongs of resiting Mr Fenwick's burgeoning compost business rather than on the bigger issue of the future of the island.

The business side is simple. Living Earth, having outgrown Pikes Pt, has sold it and has to be out by April 2007. Mr Fenwick, an adviser to the Kelliher Trust, which owns the island, and an old schoolmate of trust advisory board chairman Harry White, has done a deal to truck 50,000 tonnes of organic waste a year on to the island and turn it into compost on a 12ha open-air site.

Mr Fenwick says the trust will be able to use some of the compost in the 20- to 30-year rehabilitation programme it has for the island once mining ends in 2008 or 2009.

There has been a barrage of opposition from Mangere neighbours - only Mr Fenwick's mate, former Prime Minister David Lange, has written in support. Locals are worried about the impact of truck movements and fear a re-emergence of the flies and midges that plagued the area until the recent rebuilding of the sewage treatment works.

Among the objectors is treatment plant operator Watercare Services. Watercare's biggest concern is that having spent millions of dollars getting rid of the odours and insects and water contaminants that once degraded the neighbourhood, they will be blamed for any problems the compost plant might cause.

But in the background, Watercare is also worried that the compost plant will upset its bigger agenda. It's a proposal I pressed for at the time of the mining application four years ago, and still support.

Watercare is spending more than $100 million on rehabilitating the harbour and shoreline following the removal of the old sludge ponds and treatment plant. As the final jewel in the wonderful new harbourside park now emerging there, it wants to purchase Puketutu Island, restore it, and gift it to all Aucklanders. Back in 2002, the Kelliher Trust rebuffed all approaches.

Watercare's scheme is not totally altruistic. It's facing a 400-tonne pile of, to be genteel, biosolids a day to dispose of. As it happens, just down the road from the treatment plant is Puketutu, which has a gaping hole, after years of mining, that the owner, whoever that turns out to be, is obliged to reinstate.

Watercare reckons the hole could store upwards of 30 years of Auckland poo. Perhaps more if they carry out a threat to mould it up into a replica of the original volcanic landscape, peaks and all.

While the mountains are being recreated, the unmined landscape would be reinstated.

Mr Fenwick argues that his composting plant would be in harmony with this dream. Try as I might - because he can be persuasive - I can't agree. If only because Mt Roskill was too hard-won a fight to agree to slippage now, as far as protecting our volcanic heritage from further damage is concerned.