Letters: Wastewater rates, public servants, Eden Park and Asian art
22 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
7 minutes to read
Wastewater renewal rates have been charged for years but the funds have been channeled off for other purposes, one writer says. Photo / Alex Burton
NZ Herald
Letter of the week: Larry Mitchell, Rothesay Bay.
The (Weekend Herald, January 16) reports the plan to raise $106m rates rise . to clean up beaches .
Additional rates such as are proposed, would have been totally unnecessary if Auckland Council had followed its own rules and policies relating to the proper application-expenditure of its wastewater funding reserves.
Included in our rates bills going back almost 20 years, ratepayers have already been billed and have paid in advance the huge sums set aside for wastewater renewals. These funds had been paid, collected and reserved for the works that now need to be completed . to keep sewerage off our city beaches.
Invercargill and Dunedin have been closed by floods once a decade or so.
Graeme 1.1.1
Large parts of Dunedin are below mean sea level, some around a metre. Invercargill is just above, but close enough that a flood combined with a high tide makes things pretty wet. Both suffer from being built on very weak ground, especially Invercargill, so both are never going to be more than they are now and unlikely to get much future investment.
It s not only airports that are at risk from sea level rise. The State Highway and railway going past Dunedin Airport are only slightly higher and just as at risk in many other places.
Written By: weka - Date published: 6:06 am, January 23rd, 2021 - 38 comments
When the government proposed declaring a climate emergency in December last year, Jacinda Ardern said this,
This declaration is an acknowledgment of the next generation: an acknowledgment of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and if we do not take action now. When I visit schools, when I read children’s letters, I’m often struck by how deeply personal the climate crisis is to them. We cannot underestimate a generation, full of angst and anxiety over the reality of climate change for them and their generation. And it is up to us to make sure that we demonstrate there is a pathway, there is a plan for action, and there is a reason for hope. For them, it is instinctual. It is tangible. It is real. It is about the country they will inherit and it’s about the burden of debt they will inherit unless we make s
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TURNING HEADS
Alexei Navalny,
Vladimir Putin, which may be Russia’s biggest private home. It
OLYMPIC CANCEL CULTURE: Most Japanese want the already delayed 2021 Olympics to be cancelled, and
The Times of London is reporting Japanese officials conceding that’s likely. Prime Minister Suga told parliament Friday “I am determined to realize a safe and secure Tokyo Games
January 22, 2021 11:12 a.m.
The man who led the Trump White House’s transition to the Biden administration is calling for new, tougher legislation to guide the presidential transition process in the event a sitting President rejects the election results.
Former President Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of his loss in November meant weeks of delay and and little cooperation between parts of his administration and the incoming Biden team an absolute worst case scenario, outgoing White House deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell said in an interview Tuesday, his last full day in that job.
“We have to think about the fact that this can happen again,” Liddell told the Transition Lab podcast. He called for new legislation to allow for “provisional” transitions so that security briefings and other key processes can begin even during such a dispute.