What price Development?

Ian from Ellerslie

As a long-time resident of Ellerslie, and prior to that Mt Wellington, I love the area so it was with great sadness that I witnessed today the Power of the Almighty Dollar.
When the Racing Club developed the Hunterville/Derby Downs subdivision in 1996, a condition of the development was the planting of the boundaries along Ladies Mile and along the Racing Club/Hunterville Court boundary. This has produced an environment encouraging bird life including tui, swifts, waxeyes, green finches, fantails to name a few.
For many years the residents have been working with the Ellerslie Racing Club to ensure that their proposed developments were suitable for both the new residents and the existing ones.
We have spent many hundreds of hours studying the documents, submitted to the EPA under the Fast Track Legislation, for the Resource Consent to develop The Hill. This included an arborist report identifying the trees in the development and how they would be protected during construction. Mature native trees on the Racecourse/Hunterville Court boundary, including 8 meter Totora and Kauri trees, were deemed to be on private properties and therefore not to be affected by the development.
A few days ago, the developers, Fletcher Living, did a letterbox drop informing neighbours that they would be starting to clear vegetation on the boundary.
When we asked how they were going to manage the areas around the Kauri trees, subject to the new Kauri hygiene regulations that came into force on the 2nd August, they replied “if the Kauri trees are on Racecourse land they will be removed”.
We have spent the last few days attempting to secure the future of these trees, including offering to purchase the land on which they were growing, or paying to get the trees transplanted elsewhere.
Treescape said that they could transplant the 30 year old Kauri trees, but before that could be arranged I heard a crash, went outside and found the mature natives had been cut down!
Yesterday more than 12 tui were roosting in the large Totora, today they are homeless.
What is the purpose of the Resource Consent Legislation if the power of large companies can circumvent it so easily?
Why do we have Kauri Hygiene regulations to protect the future of our unique Kauri trees, if a large company can ignore the regulations?
It saddens me to realise that the ordinary person has virtually no say in what environment we leave for our children. Trees that took 30 years to grow and would be still growing in 100 years’ time, were gone in a few minutes and for what – a few more dollars in the pockets of the Developers who will move on and leave their mess behind.