Breaking news - Pollution contaminates Kapiti wetland at M2PP Expressway

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 146

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

A walk around our wetland on Sunday morning pinpointed a serious contamination of  the area recently excavated for the M2PP expressway. This is on the eastern boundary of the wetland close to town and had been leaking out into two small ponds close to the fence.  Here are the pictures.

This was originally a drain that came from a sewerage holding tank in Rata Road, the road that runs along the eastern side of the wetland. However closer inspection ruled the tank out as the culprit and revealed a dumped chillybin as the source of the contamination.

Someone has backed their ute up and fired the bin into the waterway.

Previously this would have found its way into the Wharemauku stream but the reconstruction of this area means that it is now dissipating through the wetland. This will already have affected the marine life in the area, and also this male putangitangi (paradise duck). 

He’s been hanging around here for a while which indicates he has a mate sitting on her nest close by.  

The responsible authority is the Greater Wellingon Regional Council (GWRC) and they have been very responsive to communication, firing off the emails and phoning through, but three days later are yet to undertake a site visit. 

We will be keeping you posted on developments.

Meanwhile we were pleased to see a story surface in the local newspaper Kapiti News, confirming our investigation of the breakup of the bitumen surface of the M2PP expressway. Repairs were now underway on 3.2 kilometres of the six months old highway. This leaves a lot of questions unanswered… Here are  some of them- 

  

Who is paying for these repairs? Is the water seepage a result of laying bitumen in inappropriate weather during our wet summer? Was this the result of government pressure to get the expressway open? Has the water seepage penetrated into the embankments of this sandhills highway? Why are there potholes now appearing in the cycleway? Who is paying for repairing these? Why were a number of senior managers recently ‘let go’ from the NZTA? The vapid response of the NZTA makes it unlikely we’ll get answers to these questions, but at least we’re still able to pose them.

Track we were listening to while posting this? It’s that great old Ella Fitzgerald standard  My Happiness… 

Whether skies are gray or blue

Any place on earth will do

Just as long as I'm with you

My happiness

It doesn’t get any better than this…

Environmental artist Jill Studd's blog

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New Zealand Expressway continues to deteriorate -an update on M2PP

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 145

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Mr Joyce's dark legacy? M2PP bridge over the Wharemauku frames the gash in the Tararuas over looking Kapiti from where fill was quarried for the expressway.  

If you aren’t local, then you probably don’t know that we are in the middle of an election campaign. What is so unexpected is that there appears to be a radical electoral swing underway, bringing us back from laissez-faireism. It is way to early to call, though one indicator may be the lack of Government media blowhard stories on this expressway, compared with the last election, which pumped out around 5 in the last two weeks before voting. 

The only stories coming out on the Expressway highlight tarmac break up and repair, and information around this is thin on the ground; so we took another ride down to see what we would find.

Well, the cones are out (above), so repair work is underway, yet most of this still seems to be around assessment of how serious and widespread the problem is and it certainly has accelerated since our last foray on June 7. We saw new damage on the lanes going north from Kapiti Rd and much bigger holes in the lanes going the other way…

Once again it is dangerous to dawdle along this highway so these shots were taken on the fly, and don’t give a clear idea of just how corrugated these areas are becoming. The inside track is the most cut up, though the outside is also beginning to deteriorate. The suspicion is that this is coming from trucks slowing and accelerating into and out of the Kapiti off-ramp. 

One thing we will be able to rely on is that no major work will be started before the election, though if the tide continues to swarm this woman’s way…

Jacinda Ardern - The next PM of NZ?

Then we might get access to the full story after that…So watch this space!

But we are running a conservation blog and so here are some birds to prove the fact.

Skylark - early spring

This is an English immigrant, a skylark, and there are four birds down at the Wharemauku, though they don’t seem yet to have sorted out who they are going to pair up with.

One of our native birds on the increase is the tui and we’ve had up to four in our kowhai trees this year. They are very fierce and love a good fracas, but this one is sitting in a budding Japanese cherry, beside a flowering kowhai, singing for dear life. 

Tui

We can't know why, but possibly she was calling others to the tree that she then dived into. They extend their feathery tongues down into the flowers syrup, and then tear the flowers to pieces; then  come back, two or three times a day, careering round the tree like children on a sugar high.    

And finally, fantail-piwakawaka. They are too lively to photograph, but  can you spot the uncooperative little blighter in this one?  

Track we were listening to today… Well, has to be the Jacinda Anthem put out by Tony Bellus in April 1959 -Robbin’ the Cradle

They say I'm robbin the cradle, little darlin

Because I've fallen in love with you

They say I'm robbin the cradle, little darlin

Is it strange for true love to be so young

Environmental artist Jill Studd’s blog

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