Glenvar Rd back on for funding!
It’s been a rollercoaster of a journey with campaigning for the upgrade of this road and intersections happening some years ago. Covid-19 halted all the design plans for construction to go ahead, and so we were back campaigning, lobbying and using every opportunity to ensure that this essential safety project carried on.
The first lot of good news came in mid-March when the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) was announced. Though it was full of errors (including funding allocations), Glenvar Rd realignment project was included. This is an essential step to getting the project delivered.
ATAP is the agreement between Government and Auckland Council on transport priorities. It sets the strategic direction to the Auckland Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP). The RLTP contains the detail that enables the ATAP direction to be delivered as well as proposed scheduling and funding across the decade.
The second lot of good news came just last week with the release of the RLTP. Glenvar Rd is included (given a rating as a ‘priority’ project) with a construction date of 2021/22. Feedback on the RLTP is open until 2 May. Please take the time to submit your support for Glenvar Rd and a construction date ASAP, as well as your other feedback on the Plan itself and how transport needs are prioritised. https://at.govt.nz/about-us/transport-plans-strategies/regional-land-transport-plan/
The RLTP is developed by Auckland Transport (AT) together with the Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and KiwiRail to respond to growth and challenges facing Auckland over the next decade. It also outlines the proposed 10-year investment programme for specific transport projects.
Browns Bay Think Tank – coming together to solve youth issues
Thanks to the efforts of passionate locals and Heart of The Bays (formerly East Coast Bays Community Project), a Think Tank has been formed of interested stakeholders and locals to tackle the youth issues we’ve been experiencing in Browns Bay lately.
It’s early days yet, but it was great to have a huge number of people come along and from such varied backgrounds – pastors of churches, Bays Youth Trust, local schools and more. I’ll keep you posted on progress.
Why we need a recycling centre on the North Shore
I was offered the opportunity to write an article in the upcoming issue of Channel Magazine, which I have copied below:
Two grand pianos. That’s the equivalent weight of how much waste each person in Auckland sends to landfill each year. We need to be far more stringent about diverting compostable and recoverable resources from ending up in a landfill. Resource Recovery Centres are one tool for achieving this.
The average Aucklander sends one tonne of waste to landfill each year. The concern isn’t just how much stuff we’re sending to the dump, but what we’re throwing out.
About half of what the average household in Auckland throws out each week is compostable material (40% food waste, 10% garden waste). Because landfills are starved of oxygen, compostable material doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it rots down creating contaminated leachate. It also gives off methane gas, which is a whopping 25 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
From audits, kerbside rubbish bins and bags also still contain a lot of material and items that can be recycled, reused or repurposed. Most of the waste we throw out each week could be used in more productive ways rather than rotting in dangerous landfills. It has the potential to be a valuable resource for Aucklanders – creating jobs and boosting the economy while allowing us to take better care of our environment.
Auckland Council is planning to expand the current strategy from 12 Community Recycling Centres (CRCs) to 23 facilities by 203 (includes CRCs and resource recovery parks). CRCs are an incredibly important way for us to reduce the waste we’re sending to landfills. You can drop off unwanted items and materials for reuse and recycling and most CRCs have shops on site which sell usable household materials.
We need one of these facilities to be in a central location on the North Shore to adequately service our residents. Earlier this year, Anna Atkinson (Upper Harbour Local Board) and I presented our Local Boards’ feedback on the updated strategy for recycling centres to the Mayor and Councillors at the Environment and Climate Change Committee. We argued why there is such great opportunity for a large, central CRC here on the North Shore, which all four North Shore Local Boards support.
Speaking to Auckland Council’s Environment and Climate Change Committee on the need for a community recycling centre to service North Shore residents.
Most of our residents have poor access to a CRC. The closest is Devonport, which serves people around there very well, but for most North Shore residents, is at least a 30-minute drive away. The North Shore is a huge part of the Auckland region and we have the potential to achieve a significant reduction of waste to landfill as well as recovering high-value items and materials. Our residents are passionate about the beautiful place we call home here on the Shore. We’re engaged and want to do the right thing but with very limited access to a CRC, this makes it challenging.
We’ve been busy identifying potential locations for Council staff to investigate, and we are fortunate to have established and experienced community organisations that Council would partner with to run a CRC. We envision that a new CRC would link in with the existing facilities, such as the one in Devonport.
The Devonport Community Recycling Centre is a partnership between Auckland Council and Global Action Plan Oceania. You can find them at 27 Lake Road where most types of waste are accepted, including building materials, green waste, recyclable materials, general rubbish, household and commercial recycling. They also sell a wide range of garden supplies such as bark, and Living Earth garden mix, lawn mix and organic compost. Trailer hire is also free when landscape supplies of over $35 are purchased. For more information and opening hours contact: 09 445 3830 or www.facebook.com/devonportrecycle/
With Adam Benli (Trustee Director, Global Action Plan), Julia Parfitt (Hibiscus and Bays Local Board) and Nicholas Mayne (Upper Harbour Local Board) at the Devonport Community Recycling Centre.
We have to keep striving to do better. We’ll continue keeping the pressure on so that residents across the North Shore have good access to CRCs so we can all do our bit to divert more waste from entering landfills.
ECB library being upgraded
East Coast Bays Library is one of the busiest libraries in all of Auckland. I’m pleased to say that long-awaited maintenance and refurbishment work is now underway.
The library closed on 12 March for work to begin, and library services are now being temporarily provided in the community centre on the other side of the Village Green. The work will take around 5 months, but the temporary library is still providing a good book selection, pick up requests, returns, computers, printing, WiFi and most of their regular programmes and events. The library hours remain the same and to support the temporary library with even more books, the Mobile Library Bus is parked outside on Tuesdays and Wednesdays 10am – 4pm and (from 17th April) Saturdays 10am – 4pm.
The bones of the library are still great, but after 40 odd years of service, she needs a bit of work. The work underway at the library includes a reconfiguration of the main entrance areas, improving and expanding space for both fiction and children’s collections, and upgrading and increasing the public toilet facilities. I’ve been assured that the iconic round children’s reading window is staying!
Mairangi Bay will still have the mobile bus visiting every Thursday morning 9:30 – 10:30am (Hastings Road, near Beach Road). This is a great local service to take advantage of.
A couple of pieces of work completed this month around the Bays – more to come.
New shade covers for Browns Bay playgroundUpgraded footpaths at Centennial Park
Comments