A judgment by independent commissioners has granted a helipad for Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray in the suburb of Westmere.
At Quiet Sky Waiheke, we think this decision is great!
Not because it’s good. It’s terrible: Thousands of people in the surrounding suburbs will be affected by noise levels of up to 93dB, that will double the amount of total noise residents are subjected to across a week (including all measured background noise, such as traffic, music, dogs barking, overflying aircraft, construction noise, etc.) and protected native birds will be allowed to ‘startle’ and fly away from their feeding grounds.
Walkers and Sea Scouts sailing in the bay will be relying on helicopter pilots seeing them on a CCTV feed that they’ll be looking at on a screen – at the same time as they pilot the helicopter in the difficult take off or landing at the small site on the top of a cliff – so that they are not at risk of being knocked down or capsized by the downdraft.
And the commissioners have decided to take a view of the law that holds that helicopters are a permitted activity in residential areas, like any other form of transport.
Because this decision is so bad, it leaves the public clamouring for council to take action. One thing that council could do is to undertake a judicial review in the High Court. They’d win that, almost certainly, for two reasons:
1) The High Court has previously ajudged that helipad consent decision makers must consider noise impacts on more than just the immediate neighbours; including the public using adjacent reserves. But in the commissioners’ decision, they restricted their considerations to the immediate neighbours (without citing any reason to disregard the case law).
2) The High Court has previously ajudged that helipad consent decision makers must consider impacts on the health and safety of neighbours and the public. But in the commissioners’ decision, they declared that health and safety was not a relevant matter of discretion (without citing any reason to disregard the case law).
There are some other grounds for appeal to the High Court:
3) The treatment of noise in the decision is confused and skewed only to the claims of the applicants, in the face of competing claims and actual testing data. Noise testing performed during the hearing found that the maximum noise would be louder than claimed (at 93dB) but this was disregarded because of a belief that consent conditions which managed and monitored the noise level could mitigate it. But maximum noise and averaged noise are two different things. Conditions and monitoring of the averaged noise, as proposed, cannot (we assume a court would decide) be used to control or monitor maximum noise levels. In any case, the actual measured finding (93dB!) was not used in the reasoning of the decision. Nor was the information from the appellant’s acoustic engineer which predicted/modelled that the helicopter movements would exceed the maximum noise limit by four decibels. Instead, it was assumed that the exceedance would be by two decibels, based only on the applicant’s engineer’s evidence. And then also based on a claim by the same engineer (in document EV5 which we can’t find in the evidence database) that a difference of 2dB is not detectable to the human ear, so therefore it would be OK to have noise of up to 87dB (2dB above the ‘maximum’ limit in the AUP standard).
4) The case law around the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement likely contradicts the claim that “evidence on avifauna and ecological effects generally” were not able to be assessed, as they were “not within relevant matters of discretion”. That could be appealed in the Environment Court. But if it was true, then it would also be true that Auckland Council has not given effect to the 2010 New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement, but should have done so. And consents granted in the face of such a failure could be annulled in the High Court.
So a judicial review would probably overturn this consent. But we’ve seen time and again, that with enough money, the rules can be navigated by applicants and their consultants to achieve consent, often to council’s surprise. And without enough money, the decisions can’t be opposed or challenged. Why should we accept a situation where a lengthy and costly hearing like this is (a) needed and (b) not sufficient to protect residents and native birds from helicopters?
There’s a simpler solution.
We are calling on all Councillors to support Councillor Mike Lee’s forthcoming notice of motion to make helipads a prohibited activity in residential areas. And to make helipads for residential/personal use a prohibited activity in other land units. In both the Auckland Unitary Plan and the Hauraki Gulf Islands District Plan.
A vote on it last year was narrowly lost. But things have changed now, as this wonderful, awful, decision, has made clear. We need a change to the activity status of helipads. Prohibit them!
Here is how the vote went last time…
The eight councillors in favour were:
Mike Lee, Christine Fletcher, Lotu Fuli, Kerrin Leoni, Greg Sayers, Ken Turner, Wayne Walker and John Watson.
We suggest writing to them, to thank them for their vote last time, and to ask that they again vote in favour and lobby their fellow councillors to do the same.
The ten councillors against were:
Mayor Wayne Brown, Andy Baker, Josephine Bartley, Angela Dalton, Chris Darby, Julie Fairey, Shane Henderson, Richard Hills (chair), Sharon Stewart and Maurice Williamson.
We suggest writing to them, to ask them to change their vote from last time, because:
Council’s planners have failed to bring in a plan change that will have any effect in the Hauraki Gulf Islands.
And because:
The Auckland Unitary Plan rules are now deemed to be as lax as the Hauraki Gulf Islands rules. Without immediate and decisive action, helipads could appear right around the coasts of Auckland, as they already have on Waiheke Island.
If just two councillors change their vote, they can become community heroes by stopping all future helipad consents. Or if just Richard Hills changes his vote, then it will be tied, and as the committee chair, he can decide it with his casting vote.
Contact details for the councillors are here.
Quiet Sky Waiheke 