The Dominion Post reports this morning that a coastal access road near Cape Kidnappers has been half-destroyed by coastal erosion.
The astounding thing is, nature didn’t do this – the RMA did.
Nearby land-owners identified the problem three years ago and tried to protect the road by building a barrier, at a cost of $10,000. They were ordered to stop because they lacked a resource consent – which would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more. Now, rebuilding the road (with a barrier) will cost half a million dollars or more. That’s the insanity of the RMA.
This comes hot on the heels of Julian Pistorius’ revelation that more than 300 homes are to be bulldozed in Mt Albert because the Environment Court, set up under the RMA, considers private property less important than the integrity of either a creek or a stretch of mangroves – through either of which alternatives the new SH20 extension could just as easily go.
This destructive, expensive foolishness has to stop. We should put a stake through the heart of the Resource Management Act and the Environment Court, and replace them with the common-sense environmental protection of private property rights and common law.
Surely, the reason we should protect the environment is because we live in it. Allowing locals to build a simple barrier beside a coastal road is just common sense – something that those behind the ridiculous red tape of the RMA seem to lack.
