Greater Wellington Regional Council has dismissed 17 charges related to the mega Transmission Gully highway and is instead going down another legal avenue to protect the environment.
The charges were dismissed in August last year with the majority of them related to sediment discharges from open earthworks into water across the project.
It’s the latest development in what has become a questionable environmental track record for the $1.25 billion motorway.
The long-awaited road opened to traffic almost two years ago but technically remains unfinished and is facing legal challenges on more than one front.
Greater Wellington Regional Council strategy, policy and regulation director Fathima Iftikar said the council was now looking at something called an enforcement order.
This order has the power to compel parties to remediate previous failures and ensure future compliance with consent conditions, Iftikar said.
The council therefore believed this could achieve a better result for the environment, she said.
“It would also provide a focus on the environmental outcomes that need to be achieved by the parties within the consented framework.”
An application for an enforcement order has yet to be filed with the Environment Court as the council is continuing to work with its legal team and relevant parties.
The council would not disclose the identity of these parties as they were part of an ongoing investigation and potential enforcement action.
The four-lane motorway was built through a public-private partnership (PPP), the Wellington Gateway Partnership (WGP), with CPB Contractors and HEB Construction sub-contracted to carry out the design and construction.
The council has previously pursued prosecution in one case against CPB HEB Joint Venture (JV).
Four charges were laid concerning track earthworks undertaken in May 2019, which caused material to enter the river beds of Duck Creek and Cannons Creek.
In 2021, GWRC’s lawyer Andrew Britton told the Environment Court the streams were not just affected by fine sediment, but by rocks and boulders going down the hillside.
He said the JV did not take steps to mitigate what happened or alert the council to something being wrong until days after the fact.
“The attitude of the JV appears to have been careless or cavalier.”
But CPB HEB JV lawyer Hamish Harwood firmly rejected this characterisation.
He said an “all hands to the task approach” was undertaken including the use of helicopters so, to suggest the JV was “slack” was not supported by these events.
The Environment Court issued a $70,000 fine.
However, the road’s environmental track record only went from bad to worse with 260 incidents or failures, consent breaches, and unconsented activities recorded by the middle of last year, according to information released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.
WGP chief executive John Humphrey said he was unable to comment on matters relating to the enforcement order.
“In terms of general comment, we note that throughout the motorway construction, the entire project team has continued to strive towards achieving the right environmental outcomes in the context of an extremely complex construction within a significant and sensitive environment.”
Greater Wellington Regional Council chairman Daran Ponter said it has been difficult to hold parties to account for their treatment of the environment throughout the Transmission Gully project.
The regional council might have approached resource consenting and compliance differently if it had its time again, he said.
“There’s a need to really look at this big-style project with big players and how you actually hold them to account.”
Meanwhile, CPB HEB JV has launched its own legal action against NZTA amid the wrangle to get the road fully finished.
NZTA transport services general manager Brett Gliddon has previously said the dispute relates to incomplete works on the road and the expectation these should be completed to the standard in the project’s contract.
At the time Gliddon confirmed the legal action, in November last year, the outstanding works included a new State Highway 59 connection between Mackays Crossing and Paekākāriki, works at the Pāuatahanui interchange, a recreational track along parts of the route, and maintenance access tracks.
Assurances have been made Transmission Gully continues to be safe and open for public use.
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.