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Mayor admits SNA mistakes Mayor Ray Wallace has given Eastbourne landowners his personal assurance that no policy on Significant Natural Areas will be adopted until full discussions with all concerned parties have been completed. “Everything is still on the table,” he told a meeting this week. “Hutt City Council acknowledge that while the first letter was sent with a view to engagement regarding the SNA issue, it would have put the fear of God into most landowners and has no legal standing.” “Council apologise for the first letter, sent out as it was, but it’s time to move forward with this." The Mayor assured the fifty-plus property owners who attended the meeting that the aim was not simply a land grab by HCC, but that the identification of SNAs within the city and how best to protect them for future generations was paramount. He acknowledged that a lot of money had been unnecessarily squandered on getting proceedings to the current stage and, by attending the meeting, he was hoping to avoid more being wasted on any litigation process, which he considered was not in the best interest of any of the parties concerned. The Mayor said it was not the council's opinion that once a property was stamped as containing SNAs, it would mean an erosion of market value. The identification of exactly what was considered an SNA was also a discussion topic. While the District Plan Committee is required under the Resource Management Act to fill an obligation regarding the protection of SNAs, some of the identified areas include grass and gorse. On behalf of the Landowners' Incorporated Society, Kathryn Cretney said ecological
23 June Pipiri 2018
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Sculpting Seaview's industrial vibe Five years in the planning and production, Lightwing, the largest sculpture in the Wellington region, had its official unveiling by Mayor Ray Wallace last month. 6m high x 10m wide, weighing in excess of 20 tonnes, Lightwing sits smack in the middle of the Hutt Park roundabout. It has been designed to morph in shape and form as you move around it. Hutt City Council allocated funding to the E Tu Awakairangi Hutt Public Art Trust to start work on a project. Wellington production designer Andrew Thomas was selected to make the work. “Natural landmarks in close proximity, the Waiwhetu Stream for one, became inspirational through the early creative process,” Andrew says. “Many curves form the stream, as it winds its way through the
valley. The shifting curves of the waves reflect the movements of the tides at the Hutt River mouth.” Inspiration was drawn further from the fine feathers which make up the wing of the Matuku Moana (white-faced heron), also found at the river mouth and neighbouring shoreline. Approximately $100,000 of engineering work, including blasting and painting was undertaken locally, keeping the total cost of the sculpture to around $250,000."I’m exceptionally pleased that the businesses and workers of Seaview can identify with its industrial representativeness,” Andrew says. Photo: Phil Benge.
assessment could not be done on the aerial photographs as submitted by HCC, and that Policy 23 of the District Plan is not specific to pests, weeds or SNAs. “Whereas, if people knew what they were supposed to be protecting they could go and look for it themselves. An ecological assessment may be in the eye of the beholder. Our concerns are that once allowed access to individual properties, they’d have all the evidence required, and this in turn could then be used against the landowner.” York Bay resident Will Bearman said that
the HCC policy in this regard was to divide and conquer and that there were occasions when civil disobedience was known to work, especially when people were fighting for their property rights. He believed that the Eastbourne Community Board had not been effective on this issue at all. Councillor and ECB member, but speaking as an individual, Murray Gibbons said that he was taken aback when it was demanded that the board declare if they were for or against the landowners. Continues Page 3
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