Welcome to NZ where the smell of the environment is 100% Pure (and rising)

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 31

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Kapiti Rd Flyover

Excavations began last month, about a kilometre away from the dune lake, at the Kapiti Rd intersection. These seemed limited to a flyover exchange and realigning the underground cables  along this main thoroughfare.

Survey party dune lake env

Survey party dune lake environ. 

Within the last week however surveyors have been out in the area surrounding the dune lake to place marker posts that define the extent of the earthworks. These indicate that the NZTA, off its own bat, has swung the road much closer in to the residential area than it had declared to the Board of Inquiry.  The road will be on a 20 foot high embankment, so the passing traffic will now be cheek by jowl with their kitchen windows. It will also completely obliterate the dune lake, from which the original proposal was going to slice only .2 of a hectare.  

Survey post indicating extent of earthworks lies at western end of dune lake 

We are currently seeking the details of these changes and under whose authority they have been made, though we aren’t holding our breath for a straight answer. As it has gathered momentum this project has become something of a law unto itself, underlined by the fact that the NZTA and its partners have stopped posting weekly updates in the local paper.

NIWA pollutant monitor July 2014

Meanwhile NIWA has been maintaining its usual high standard of pollutant detection and we have been monitoring a new red pollutant that has been leaching from Drain 7 into the Wharemauku. We haven't been able to source it as yet, but the finger of suspicion points directly at the NZTA and its partners, for the stain colour matches the rock fill that has been dumped on the expressway over the last few weeks.

This pollutant won't however, be picked up by NIWA because it is leaching out into the Wharemauku below their monitoring equipment. So welcome to NZ – where the smell of the environment is 100% Pure (and rising).

We posted this in silence and disgust at what’s going on in the world today – in Palestine and Ukraine and Tripoli, against which this looks a very minor flap. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. 

Jill Studd's Blog

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