Archive for September, 2017

Washing greens in the creek…

September 24th, 2017

This lady is washing large bunches of newly collected greens in Meola Creek. She did not speak English and did not understand messages of danger. We hope she and her family stay well.
Meola Creek receives approximately 1 million cubic meters of untreated sewage and road runoff every year. That is more than 1 Olympic Swimming pool of polluted water every day on average. We wrote to Skykiwi (a Chinese language web site) to seek their help in explaining this to some immigrants. The site she chose has several pieces of plastic and other rubbish visible in the water, though the water seemed clear on that day. 
With intensification and immigration gathering pace in Auckland, we believe Council needs to find better ways of informing non-English speakers that Auckland parks are not pristine places where resources are there for the taking.
Auckland Council is aware that Aucklanders strongly disagree with their waste disposal approach. We have asked that they put money into the Auckland Plan refresh and long term plan to remedy it, and we hope this will happen at some future date.
This is a case where the image of ‘clean green NZ’ comes up against the reality of Auckland’s heritage sewerage system. We do not believe this should be left to future generations to solve.

Pourewa Stream links

September 24th, 2017

Orakei Local Board Chair Carmel Claridge took a walk with us in August.

Carmel has been working closely with STEPS Patron Roy Clements as they improved the Pourewa stream over the past few years, and she is standing here with Pat Prescott at the sign for the Roy Clements Treeway.  Carmel also Chairs the Friends of Pourewa Valley http://www.pourewavalley.org/.

Meola Creek and stormwater

September 22nd, 2017

With renewed awareness about the issues of urban stormwater in Auckland STEPS has been busy walking people through Roy Clements Treeway and Kerr Taylor Reserve.

Here Pat Prescott and Councillor Cathy Casey are shown walking along the boardwalk.

We were delighted with the diligent follow up from Councillor Casey and council officers about some of the improvements that need to be made.

Councillor Casey later followed up with a question to the Healthy Waters team (Auckland Council) about multi lingual signs pointing out the dangers of beaches and creeks subject to overflows of sewage and heavy metals.  STEPS is very concerned about non-English speakers who collect and wash wild green vegetables in Meola Creek.

We thank Councillor Casey, along with others who are asking about STEPS’ work and the state of Meola Creek in 2017.

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