Panel chair unconvinced
Sheena Tepania
While four of the five commissioners who sat on the Waste Management resource consent hearings panel were satisfied that the adverse effects from the landfill could be mitigated, the chair, Sheena Tepania, was not.
In a separate 45-page section within the 317-page decision, Ms Tepania set out the reasons why she believed the application should have been refused.
She said that the actual and potential adverse effects of the landfill in terms of ecology and cultural views were significant and had not been avoided or mitigated to meet the purpose of the Resource Management Act.
But such intangible cultural effects could not overwhelm the Resource Management Act, the National Policy Statement on freshwater, the Auckland Unitary Plan, Auckland Council s officials and four men sitting in judgment. An independent planning panel for Auckland Council has approved a 60-hectare landfill for a farm and bush site in the Dome Valley just south of Wellsford to take Auckland city s waste for the next 35 years.
Supplied Law over lore. The tangible over the intangible. A council expert who recommended the dump be approved later accepted at the hearing that there would be intangible adverse cultural effects, and only mana whenua can speak to mana whenua values .
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