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April 10, 2023
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The Environment Court landfill appeals moved offline from Microsoft Teams to a marae last week, as Judges Melinda Dickey and Jeff Smith (pictured), together with Commissioners Ruth Bartlett, Glenys Payne and Kevin Prime, reconvened for cultural evidence at Te Ao Marama Maori cultural centre in Te Hana.
Manuhiri does landfill land deal DOME VALLEY LANDFILL
All the land for the proposed mega-dump in the Dome Valley will eventually be gifted to the Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust by Waste Management NZ (WM), if the landfill goes ahead. The Environment Court heard last week that this formed part of the agreement reached between WM and the trust recently. As a result, Ngāti Manuhiri’s previous position as a vocal opponent to the tip, and appellant against the resource consent, switched to support.
The trust’s lawyer Jason Pou said during the cultural evidence sessions at Te Hana Te Ao Marama Maori cultural centre last week that one of the issues Ngāti Manuhiri wanted to achieve was “to have the land for their people to live in, in their rohe”, or territory. “One of the things Ngāti Manuhiri agreed with Waste Management is that Ngāti Manuhiri would receive all the land, the buffer land, including land with exotic forest,” Pou said. The WM land totals just over 1000 hectares, comprising two properties – the
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Springhill Estate site, previously owned by Richard Izard and then Tony Lentino, and land largely planted with pines that was owned by Matariki Forests. The gift of the landholding comes in addition to WM’s agreement to pay $10 million in the event of the planned landfill ever “threatening the integrity” of the Hoteo River, which runs through Springhill and out to the Kaipara Harbour. The revelation came as Pou was questioning Te Rūnanaga o Ngāti Whātua co-chair Dame Naida Glavish, who had just spoken at length about the damage she feared the
proposed tip would do to the mauri, or life force, of the Hoteo River and Kaipara. Pou asked her if she could see Ngāti Manuhiri owning the land as being “something worse than the current pakeha ownership?” She said definitely not, as Ngāti Whātua could always sit down with Ngāti Manuhiri and have a good conversation. “We can agree to disagree, but the relationship is still strong,” she said. However, when Pou suggested the fact continued page2
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