Environment – Dirty deeds done dirt cheap

The rolling green and bush-clad hills of Rodney are lovely landscapes. Rivers winding through, rich habitats, a smorgasbord of beautiful beaches, and all on the edge of the country’s biggest city. I always feel honoured to live here, despite the changes and the growth.

It’s those changes and growth that also threaten the area’s ecology, with property fragmentation, increasing traffic, introduced plants and animals; population pressures are pretty profound. Everyone else wants to live here, too.

The apple and orange orchards that I walked past to catch the school bus, and worked in as a teenager, are left fallow, now owned by land bankers waiting for the right moment. Elsewhere, the soil is already being stripped from fertile flats where they used to grow potatoes. That’s to make way for light industry to employ new generations of residents.

Not only is the loss of the good soil and food bowls near cities an issue for food costs and security, but the soil that’s stripped to create residential, commercial and industrial sites, and infrastructure projects, has to go somewhere, too.

Local earthmovers advertise for sites to place all that good, but surplus soil. Over the last few weeks, some of it’s been coming to a new ‘clean fill site’ right next to me in my little cottage, perched on the side of a significant ecological area. It’s a little valley headwater, with some quite nice bush that the cattle graze through and stream flats where they trudge through mud. The slopes were old kauri lands, slumping and fragile.

However, a temporary crossing was formed, and in two days so far about 35 truckloads of that nice rich surplus local soil has been dumped in a large pile. The stream bed is about 20 metres away from the growing mound, but the contiguous bush and headwaters of the catchment are seemingly irrelevant when it comes to top soil deposition and earthworks.

Almost every valley, slump, dip, depression and gully in my little district has been the receiver of stripped soil. On these local sites – previously known as paddocks – sediment management is minimal.

The trucks roar up and down the roads in ways that are threatening for locals who like to walk, bike or ride their horses down the road. Potholes form quickly because of the vehicle pressure. On my corner, the trucks reverse across two lanes to get in to dump their loads. There’s a belief that this can happen as of right, no rules apply, and that it’s a public good to move good soil from river flats onto undulating hills.

Today, the rain and a council edict that the neighbours install silt fences, has held up work. Soon, they’ll be back with their trucks and their diggers, paving paradise down the road and filling in its hollows everywhere else.