TRANSCRIPT of PROCEEDINGS BOARD of INQUIRY Mackays To

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS BOARD OF INQUIRY MacKays to Peka Peka Expressway Proposal HEARING at KAPITI COAST on 14 JANUARY 2013 BOARD OF INQUIRY: Sir John Hansen (Chairperson) Environment Commissioner David Bunting (Board Member) Ms Glenice Paine (Board Member) Mr Mark Apeldoorn (Board Member) Page 2084 [9.29 am] CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Good morning, just to remind submitters before 5 we start that this is an opportunity to speak to the submissions that have already been filed and I think the first, Ms Hawken and Mr Mansfield. MS HAWKEN: Thank you, your Honour, and members of the Board for giving me this opportunity to speak about the expressway proposal. 10 My name is Dinah Hawken and I live in Paekakariki because of the quiet and the beauty of the coastal environment and the satisfactions of living in a small community. I identify strongly with others who live on the Kapiti Coast for the same reasons and who would be affected by the building of an expressway through their neighbourhoods. 15 I have worked as a social worker and counsellor. I am also a poet and have recently been teaching a course at Victoria University called “Writing the Landscape”. I am grateful that you are hearing personal and general responses to the proposal because I think the whole range 20 of opinion from the most technical and detailed to the most broad and personal are relevant and of value. [9.30 am] 25 I will give my reactions in a brief and forthright way knowing that you are also hearing many other points of view. I am also grateful that you are hearing representations from those of us who oppose the proposal in full because I agree with Mr Richard Fowler in his oral submission on the second day of the hearing that the scale and enormous 30 consequences of NZTA‟s plan require that alternatives are seriously and adequately considered. At the end of my written submission I refer to NZTA‟s proposal as major surgery and to the main alternative, the two lane Western Link 35 Road with a bridge over the Waikanae River, upgrade of State Highway 1 and improved public transport as minor surgery. Both are for the same condition and many of us differ in our judgements about how serious that condition is. As you will know by now the alternative for minor surgery has been seriously and adequately considered and 40 was the option of choice by the Kapiti community, the KCDC and NZTA itself in 2009 when the present proposal came out of the blue. For me there are three general questions that need to be asked and answered and they have an ethical underpinning because the costs of 45 this project are very high. (1) is the expressway necessary, (2) will the building of the expressway through Kapiti be more destructive than it is Kapiti Coast 14.01.13 Page 2085 constructive and (3) if it is too destructive is there an adequate less destructive alternative? The purpose of the RMA is to sustainably manage our natural resources 5 in a way that enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural wellbeing. We need to ask which of the two alternatives would do that best. From what I have heard and read as an ordinary citizen taking a non- 10 expert interest in these questions it seems that some of the benefits of the expressway are certain and some are uncertain. The clear beneficiaries of the expressway would seem to be people travelling from Wellington through Kapiti on their way further north. Those private car commuters in Kapiti who live near an interchange and the 15 trucking industry, their benefits would be decreased travel time and greater road safety. Although they represent only some of us they are our greater good. I expect the Minister and NZTA would argue that the greater good is 20 the national economy but whether there would be national, regional or local economic benefits seems to be quite uncertain, there are various and contradictory reports. The benefit cost ratio is very low. I have been wondering if the proposed expressway truly is of national significance or, to put it another way, if New Zealand‟s economic 25 future would suffer significantly if this expressway did not go ahead. What is certain is that the building of a big project like this is destructive, there is no getting around it, sometimes quite literally, whatever the mitigation, however well intentioned the mitigation, a 30 major expressway is destructive. It is destructive of settled landscapes, of soils, waterways, wetlands, air quality and the life of plants, creatures and people. That is why the Minister has sent NZTA‟s application to a Board of Inquiry. NZTA‟s non-technical summary of the assessment of environmental effects emphasises mitigation and 35 positive benefits in a way that is convincing on a first read but avoids the overall issue of the destructiveness of such a huge project on communities living on a narrow strip of coastal land. The assessment slants away from the adverse effects. The photographs 40 on the cover exemplify this tendency in all their informational material which, to my mind, has been dishonest. On this cover there is an overview of the Kapiti district and Kapiti Island without an expressway in site and two small slices of a distant over bridge surrounded by green, one with a cycleway beneath it. There is not a car in site in 45 either of them. Kapiti Coast 14.01.13 Page 2086 [9.35 am] NZTA makes much of the walkway/cycleway but I wonder if many of us who live in Kapiti would choose to walk alongside an expressway 5 when we can walk by the Waikanae River on Whareroa Farm or for miles along the beach. A cycleway is important however, for cyclists commuting between towns, as was envisaged in the plan for the Western Link Road. 10 In comparison to the benefits of the expressway the benefits of the Western Link Road are fairly certain, less cost, less destruction of the environment, less noise, less disruption during construction, less displacement of people and property, less severance of communities, less intrusion of wahi tapu sites, the creation of jobs and some 15 decreased travel time on a less congested and upgraded State Highway 1. These benefits may seem less dramatic than those of the road of national significance but accumulatively they add up to a significant package and deserve to be considered seriously. 20 I have been puzzling over why I feel so strongly about this proposal that I would uncharacteristically make a presentation to a Board of Inquiry. On investigation, internal investigation that is, I realised that I am both angry and sad. I am angry (a) because of the sudden ill considered imposition of the expressway plan on the community 25 without respect for the history of the Western Link Road decision, which had been settled and was ready to go. It put our Council in an impossible position. And I am angry (b) because of the confusing and seemingly manipulative nature of the first submission process which gave the community no choice for the negotiated Western Link Road 30 but only choices about the location of an expressway, one of which was over the Western Link Road route. People were either confused or forced to put in a submission that had no weight. It has been hard since then to trust the genuineness of NZTA‟s consultation process. However, I think the open attitude of the Board of Inquiry has restored 35 some faith in the overall process of consultation. I think it would be true to say that many or most of us who live on the Kapiti Coast do so because it gives us a quiet, low key outdoor lifestyle close to the beach, the hills and the natural world generally. I am very 40 sad for those many people whose lifestyle will be disrupted by the intrusion of a hard, ugly, unceasingly noisy major highway. I am sad for those whose community life will be severed where homes are divided from schools, families from the beach, their local activities and their local shops, for the kids who will no longer be able to walk or ride 45 easily to school or to visit friends. There is no doubt that an expressway is a barrier. We lived 150 metres from one in Yonkers, Kapiti Coast 14.01.13 Page 2087 New York for a year and almost instinctively did everything possible to keep our life and activities to our side of the divide. We also lived for three years in New York City adjacent to the East 5 Side highway with the constant stream of cars reflecting in our bedroom ceiling light. I can tell you that living near a motorway is stressful and wearying. People who have not had that experience might be more easily seduced by NZTA‟s leafy pictures. A more accurate picture to see in your mind‟s eye is the motorway between Porirua east 10 and Porirua or between Newlands and Johnsonville. [9.40 am] I am sad also that this proposal again puts economic growth like a God 15 above all that matters to most people. What really seems to matter to us most and gives us a sense of wellbeing is good health, good relationships, a sense of place, a sense of community, peace of mind and a strong connection with the natural world. Travel time and speed and their link to economic growth seem to be given a predominant 20 value in this proposal.

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