Mayor On The Right Track – Yeah Right!

Perhaps the permitted house is not exactly “on” the estuary, as in you don’t need a boat or to wait until low tide to access it, but it is certainly encroaching on the estuary.

The estuary that DOC describes as:

Waimea Inlet is the largest semi-enclosed estuary in the South Island.

It is an important example of this ecosystem type. It provides habitat for:

• rare or threatened native plants and animals, and
• important populations of coastal wetland birds and migratory wading birds.

But the values of the Waimea Inlet ecosytem have been severely degraded and a restoration project is underway.

That almost sounds worthy of looking after don’t you think?

Yes, we have neglected and subjected it to all manner of degradation for years, but now we have turned a corner and decided to restore it as best we can before we lose it altogether.  Or have we?

George Hilgeholt applied to the council to build this building on the edge of the estuary at Johnstone Loop near Tasman.

What is the problem with that you say?

Well, the measuring stick used to portray the building in the picture submitted for approval seems to be the same one that council used to measure the building against compliance requirements for building in such a location.

When the building is drawn to the scale that coincides with the dimensions given by the architect the picture looks slightly different. In fact, it appears to look significantly different.

Not only is the building significantly more of an eye saw than the submitted rendition would indicate, it seems to have a few other issues that raise red flags too.

The following questions (and more) are raised by the Save Our Shores TDC Facebook page:

The Tasman District Council is ignoring the consensus to save, more intent on invade via RMA rule manipulation … Why would you allowed a new building to be 93% noncompliant – sited 7 metres from the Mean Springs Tide Water Mark versus the TRMP regulation of 100 metres of set back in Rural 1 let alone the Coastal Overlay? Why would you allow a building to have a Waste Water Secondary treatment to be within 7m of the high tide mark and a few metres from a wetland? Why have a national Coastal Policy height restriction of 5 metres – then allow a 6.7 metre building?

They seem like good questions to me.

Farmers in the outer extremities of TDC have had large tracts of their land ring-fenced because they are wetlands of national significance. I wonder how they feel knowing that the council has little regard for estuary wetlands?

What do you think?