Mike Lee’s Notice of Motion for the Hauraki Gulf Islands was passed by the Policy and Planning Committee. Quiet Sky Waiheke gave a powerful presentation on it being D-Day: Decision day for the committee. There were supportive presentations also from Quiet Sky Waitemata, the Herne Bay Residents Association, and the Aotea/Great Barrier and Waiheke Local Boards. Then Mike Lee presented his NoM and the motion was carried. We have won the battle for the hearts and minds of the committee!
But that doesn’t mean that we have yet won peace and quiet from helicopters. There’s a long road ahead to achieve that. As of today, there is no change to the planning rules for consenting helipads, no change to the rules governing overflying, and no revocation of the existing helipads. Here’s what lies ahead:
Fighting for the Beaches
Council has stated that as a result of the NoM being carried, they will withdraw their existing plan change, which is meant to be giving effect to the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement. There is no justification for this. It feels like a petulant flanking manoeuvre to punish us for getting the councillors to vote for tighter controls on helipad consents. This is the wording of council’s media release:
The Hauraki Gulf Islands:
Waiheke and Aotea/Great Barrier Island
The committee has also voted to initiate a plan change to make private helicopter take-offs and landings a prohibited activity in residential areas of the Hauraki Gulf Islands. To proceed, the current plan modification to the Hauraki Gulf Islands District Plan on helipads must be formally withdrawn. To initiate a new plan change requires the approval of the minister.
We are challenging council to provide evidence for their assertion that “to proceed, the current plan modification to the Hauraki Gulf Islands District Plan on helipads must be formally withdrawn”. This plan change was to give effect to the 2010 Coastal Policy Statement, which council is required by law to give effect to ‘as soon as practicable’. We have always contested that council has been delinquent in making a plan change, and that it has had adverse impacts on supposedly protected native birds.
Unless council can provide evidence for its assertion and proposed course of action, withdrawing a plan change that is in its latter stages, appears to be further predatory delay and a waste of ratepayer money.
If this is allowed to stand, then council will potentially be delaying any change until after the RMA is replaced. If the Minister for the Environment doesn’t grant an exception to allow the new plan change to proceed (which unfortunately seems likely) council will likely pause all progress until there are new overarching planning laws. And then they may say that the NoM is incompatible with the new law and moreover that the whole plan needs changing, so it should all be done at the same time…meaning a very long delay before any rules are changed.
Given the high potential for delay to the plan change mandated by the NoM, council should not cease work on the existing plan change, which is, in their own words ‘purposely narrow’ and which simply gives effect to central government policy. It could be completed before central government’s moratorium on plan changes. It’s a bird in the hand. It’s also a different topic to the plan change required by the NoM. Is this just a convenient excuse to ditch something the planners didn’t want to do?
Defining Residential Areas
During the committee meeting, there was discussion about how ‘residential areas’ does not have the same meaning as ‘residential zones’ (which is the AUP terminology; the Hauraki Gulf Islands District Plan terminology is ‘residential land units’). Getting some clearer direction to councillors and council planners about which areas need protection is going to be critical to ensuring that Mike Lee’s NoM achieves what it should, once council do get around to giving effect to it.
There has only been one helipad consented in a residential land unit on Waiheke – and that one couldn’t have been consented under the current rules. In effect, it’s already almost impossible to gain consent for a helipad in a residential land unit. The rest of the nearly seventy helipads were consented in rural land units. But those consented helipads are very much in and around what Waiheke Islanders think of as residential areas.
Making sure that the planners don’t take a reductive approach to implementing the NoM is going to be critical to ensuring that it achieves what it intends to. It’s obvious what is meant by it, but we can’t leave it to the planners to implement as there’s a real risk they will ‘work to rule’ and deliver a plan change that does nothing to stop the proliferation of helipads on Waiheke.
Even if this plan change is delayed by the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill, the intent to stop new helipads on Waiheke is clear from the community, its elected representatives, the Notice of Motion, and now the Policy and Planning Committee. But we will need to hold the planning department and future elected councillors to this over the coming years, until it eventually comes to fruition as new rules.
Dealing with the Existing Helipads
Even after the NoM has been given effect to, there will remain the issue of the existing helipads (and any which are consented from now until the rules change). Here are some things we will be pursuing:
- Some helipads are actually deemed heliports, based on high usage. They are obliged to to apply to the Civil Aviation Authority under Part 157 of the Civil Aviation Rules. We’ll be pressing to see that they do, as it’s a requirement for safety reasons and we don’t want to take risks with safety.
- If council withdraws its plan change to give effect to the NZCPS, we will look to persuade an environmental organisation to apply to the environment court, for a declaration that council should have given effect to the NZCPS much earlier, and that many of the consents which have been granted should therefore have been processed under different rules. If that declaration is made, then it may be possible to apply to annul the consents which were granted under the inappropriate rules.
- When we feel there’s a good chance of success, we plan to lobby the Aviation Minister to use their new powers to make rules to better control the airspace over Waiheke, for noise abatement reasons. In effect, revisiting our previous application to control the airspace over Waiheke. It’s something they do in The Hamptons.
Get in Touch!
Please send us a message if you think you may be able to help with any of this mahi.
Quiet Sky Waiheke 