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Special legislation aimed at preserving the Waitakere Ranges environment was passed in Parliament last night - more than three years after a storm of controversy prompted by fears of clamps on property rights.
It establishes the 27,000ha "Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area", which includes the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park,
residential areas around Titirangi, the foothills of the ranges, coastal villages such as Piha, Karekare and Huia and a small area of Rodney District near Bethells Beach (Te Henga).
The regional park occupies 17,000ha and the rest of the land is privately owned. The act passed its third and final reading and becomes law on Monday.
Its passing was hailed last night by Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey as a way to meet the challenge of keeping the character of the rural, coastal and bush areas of the ranges on the doorstep of the country's biggest city.
He said the legislation, sponsored by Labour and Waitakere MP Lynne Pillay, was a tool to help implement other pieces of legislation such as the Resource Management Act.
"It's all to easy for decisions to be made unwittingly in isolation that stretch the boundaries of development that, added up over time, have a significant detrimental impact," said Mr Harvey.
"The act will function like a benchmark of what the people of the Waitakeres would like their communities and environment to be in 10, 50 or 100 years."
Mr Harvey said the legislation had been heartily supported by Sir Edmund Hillary who had a holiday home at Anawhata. Sir Edmund wrote to a friend: "It is a magnificent piece of coastline and forest and Auckland is very fortunate to have it so close."
The heritage area was promoted by Waitakere City Council, Rodney District Council and the Auckland Regional Authority.
ARC parks chairwoman Sandra Coney said the area had a long history of settlement and the law aimed to let people live and play harmoniously with the environment by giving councils the guidance and tools to achieve this.
Three years ago, the councils started the tough job of persuading the public about the good intentions of the draft bill.
Its authors faced rowdy meetings, where residents of foothills areas such as Oratia and Swanson, passionately defended the option to subdivide uneconomic rural holdings.
One of the big issues was defining the areas to be included in the heritage protection area.
The boundary took into account ecological, landscape and cultural heritage values and the area needed to act as a buffer to rapidly growing metropolitan urban areas.
During consultation on the draft, the council had 3500 written responses, which showed 71 per cent support for legislation.