Brian Rudman: Options for an island gem that doesn't need any rubbish

Whether processing 75,000 tonnes of green waste a year into compost on Puketutu Island is a good thing is obviously a moot point.

Late last year, an independent panel of commissioners said it was not, because of, among other things, the island's "unique landscape" and "regional significant and cultural heritage values".

But Environment Court judge David Sheppard and two different commissioners have ruled otherwise, saying that composting will have only a minor effect on the surrounding environment.

The Auckland Regional Council, which opposed the plan with Manukau City, Watercare Services and various Mangere neighbours, will decide on Monday whether to appeal to a higher court.

While my sympathies remain with the opponents, might not a better way to defeat the project be for the regional council to build a modern in-vessel composting plant elsewhere, rendering the old fashioned, open air composting facility planned for Puketutu redundant?

After all, Living Earth, this week's victor, indicated in court that it would move to alternative facilities if they became available.

The compost maker also reduced the length of occupancy it was seeking on Puketutu from 20 years to 10 years during the appeal.

Rather than line the lawyers' pockets yet again, we should take the composters at their word and come up with a 21st century plant which the region could either run itself, or throw open to competing operators - including Living Earth.

It's unfortunate that the side show over whether the compost plant is a permissible activity under the Resource Management Act has come to overshadow the big issue.

That is that this ancient Manukau Harbour volcanic island should long ago have been made a public reserve.

It was mutilated in the middle of last century for gravel for the runways of the adjacent international airport, and is still subject to mining to this day.

But what remains should not be put to further industrial use.

Instead, it should be incorporated into the growing swathe of coastal reserve being rehabilitated and developed by the Manukau City Council and Watercare Services.

As I wrote in November, a compost plant doesn't need sea views.

For decades, the inner shores of Puketutu were a sea barrier for the Mangere sewerage plant settling ponds. Watercare's recent multi-million-dollar upgrading of the sewerage works has resulted in the removal of the ponds and the return of the sea.

Watercare wants to buy the island from the Sir Henry Kelliher Charitable Trust, and use the deep excavation hole to store the next 40 years of Auckland's treated "biosolids".

It proposes to develop the rest of the island as a public reserve.

But the trust refuses to sell, relying for income on mining royalties that run out in 2008 or 2009 and the hope of ten years of income from Living Earth.

But back to the compost. There's no doubt the region needs somewhere to process its green waste. Until now we've relied on Living Earth's effective but archaic system of laying the waste outside in rows - currently at Pikes Point, Onehunga - and mechanically turning them from time to time to air them.

Wellington region has a modern in-vessel system, housed in a building where the process odours can be better controlled.

Of course it's more expensive to operate than Auckland's "throw the waste on the ground and let nature do its work" system, but with land at a premium, do we have any option if we want to protect gems such as Puketutu. Of course, local politicians faint away at the thought of another call on the rates.

The alternative could be a waste levy, which parliamentarians have been flirting with at least since 2002 when the national waste management strategy was released.

A few months ago, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Morgan Williams told Parliament that levying might be the only way to reduce waste.

Soon after, Green MP Nandor Tanczos promoted a bill calling for a levy of $25 a tonne on waste sent for disposal.

This would act not only as a deterrent, but also as a way of paying for the disposal of the waste.

The levy could help pay for such devices as an in-vessel composter.

This would take up much less room than Living Earth's existing Auckland system, and be at home somewhere other than on Puketutu Island.