Brian Rudman: Venting a little steam on behalf of Orakei Basin

COMMENT


Let me confess, I'm feeling rather guilty about my neglect for the well-being of the volcanic cone that is Orakei Basin. Last year, when the road builders massed their bulldozers at the bottom of Mt Roskill, I was vociferous in my outrage.

Not that the outrage had any effect. What earned Mt Roskill a last-minute reprieve was the fortuitous discovery of a long-forgotten 1915 law drawn up to stop an earlier generation of road builders whittling away any more Auckland volcanoes for metal.

Now Mt Roskill's water-filled sibling across town in the well-heeled eastern suburbs is at risk from the dreaded eastern highway, yet nobody seems to be waving the 1915 act aloft and crying enough. So I will.

After all, isn't Orakei Basin every bit as much a part of Auckland's unique volcanic field as Mt Roskill? Didn't it belch out gas and magma like its dozens of bigger brothers? Didn't it leave a tell-tale crater once it died down, like the others?

The only difference about Orakei was it was a bit of a runt. One roar and it was exhausted and went back to sleep. As a result, its cone remained at ground level, to be filled, eventually, with water.

For all that, it's just as much a part of our volcanic heritage as show-off cones such as Rangitoto and Mt Eden. This is certainly the view of Auckland City, which in its volcanic landscapes and features management strategy declares a mission "to protect, preserve and enhance" all parts of the field "and to prevent any further alterations to [its] physical structure and outline" because of its "outstanding environmental, heritage and recreational values".

So important is it that one of the city's declared aims is to have the total volcanic field classified not just as a national reserve but as a Unesco world heritage site.

I wonder if it plans to do that before or after Mayor John Banks drives his highway through Orakei Basin's tuff ring?

The 1915 act has already frightened the eastern highway builders away from the slopes of Mt Wellington, but for reasons best known to themselves they have decided to plough straight through the summit of Orakei Basin. Probably because, once they get to the bottom of Purewa Creek, they have no other options.

Maybe they have also taken the attitude Transit New Zealand's glass-tower lawyers originally did when confronted with the 1915 act and decided to treat it as some sort of obscure joke. We know how wrong they were on that score.

Introducing the act, then Prime Minister William Massey said "the volcanic hills in and around the city of Auckland are being destroyed by quarrying operations and the legislation has been framed with a view to preventing their destruction". His act "provides that any excavation on any cone or hill shall only be allowable on leaving a batter of not less than 40 degrees from the top of the quarry to the floor of same ... "

A batter is a mining term referring to the receding upward slope of the outer face of an excavation.

The act forbids not just excavations but any "quarry, terrace or cutting of any kind" unless the proponent has the permission of the Governor in Council, which in today's terms is the Executive, chaired by the Governor-General.

The ban is limited to cones bounded by or abutting a domain or public reserve, which is the case here. The slope thing might be a bit more tricky. It depends a bit, I guess, on how the highway is to be built. Maybe they'll try to stick it up on stilts to avoid excavating the slopes.

But it does seem hard to envisage how they could avoid at some stage engaging in "a cutting of any kind".

Still, if the 1915 act proves tricky to invoke, the authors of Auckland City's volcanic landscapes management strategy offer several helpful alternative ways to "legally protect some of the volcanic landscapes and features from detrimental effects".

Under the Resource Management Act 1991, they say, Orakei Basin could be protected as an outstanding feature or landscape and as representative of the natural character of the coastal environment, to name but two of several suggestions.

Other useful tools, they suggest, are the Reserves Act 1977, Historic Places Act and Auckland City's own district plan, which recognises the need to preserve volcanic features.

With that sort of legal backing, Orakei Basin could well have a volcanic burp or two left after all.