New move planned on refuse station

Press, 14 March 1980, Page 4

New move planned on refuse station

A rubbish transfer station may still be built in Styx MiH Road in spite of the Waimairi County Council’s recent refusal to grant planning permission for use of a she.

The '• Christchurch Metropolitan Refuse Disposal Committee will try a new legal approach to gain the necessary, approval from the County Council. The council ruled last month that the legal requirement for a public work served on it by the committee was invalid. It held that the committee had no power of designation and also that the 9ha site on the north side of Styx Mill Road was "not appropriate” for a transfer station. A Waimairi County subcommittee had previously spent two weeks hearing more than 800 objections against, and 17 submissions for. the site. At “ a closed meeting yesterday, the Refuse Disposal Committee decided not to dispute the council’s ruling. Instead, it will ask each of its five constituent local bodies to make a new requirement on Waimairi to designate the land in quesi tion for the transfer station. The Christchurch City Council, Heathcote and Paparua County Councils, and Kaiapoi and Riccarton borough councils will •• be asked to take this action “to give better effect” to their joint agreement in October, 1978, which formed the Refuse Disposal Committee. That agreement gave the committee powers to plan, design, and administer a comprehensive scheme for disposal in Christchurch. The committee says the local bodies can use powers under section 118 of the Town arid Country Planning Act, 1977, to require the ap-

propriate provisions in the Waimairi district scheme.

Another resolution at yesterday’s meeting asked that the local bodies use the same powers towards securing planning designation of land on the Waimairi coast as a refuse disposal landfill site.

If there was no change in the objections or submissions on the proposed transfer station at Styx Mill Road the WainMtri County Council’s hearings committee would have to rule the proposal ' “marginally unacceptable” again, said the chairman of the committee (Mr I. Calvert) last evening. Mr Calvert said the hearings committee could cut short the hearing process if all parties were agreeable. “If it did, however, I fail to see how the hearings committee could reach a different decision,” he said. The chairman of the Reds wood Action Committee (Mr B. A. Le Fevre) said last evening that he was disappointed about the Rfuse Committee’s decision. It had put the ball back in the county’s court and appeared to be an attempt to gain the right of appeal lost when the legality of the committee’s right to make a designation was denied. by the County Council, he said. Questioned after the Refuse Committee’s meeting, the chairman (Mr J. M. McKenzie) suggested that the debate over the Northern Refuse Dispoal Transfer Station’s siting in Styx Mill Road was “back to square one.” The Waimairi County Council decision had cost

the committee a few months delay, he said. However, he still hoped the: metropolitan scheme would; be working by the time it; was needed. ..I Mr McKenzie said he is committee was again "driven to the conclusion” that the I best site for the northern station was either Railways land in Styx Mill Road, which was out of the question, or the other site along the same road. No matter where it was sited, he said, the station would attract the objections of nearby residents. . Careful investigation of the town and country planning legislation had shown there was doubt about the legality of the committee’s placing a public work requirement on the County Council, he said. However,' the committee did not want to spend money contesting the ruling in court. .. , ’Mr McKenzie said the committee was happy for both sides of the debate to be "taken as read.”

“As far as we are concerned, our evidence as already given can be deemed to be our evidence for any other hearing,” he said. Mr McKenzie said the five local bodies represented on the committee ’ would be asked to adopt unchanged the .evidence outlining the transfer station plans that had already been submitted to Waimairi County. However, there was noth» ing to stop any new objections or submissions being lodged, or any previous objector wanting to restate his objection.