One has to admire the Hastings District Council’s hutzpah is putting out a media release giving a glowing account of its ‘Johnny-on-the-spot’ plan to fix a historic dump site discovered near the banks of the Karituwhenua Stream in Palmbrook Reserve.
Says the release: “Asbestos at the site was removed urgently when the issue was first discovered in July, and since then a comprehensive plan to remove as much rubbish as possible without impacting the stream had been put together by Hastings District Council and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.”
The release quotes a Council staffer: “We have to rely on people like the planting group letting us know as soon as they find anything suspicious, after which we can investigate and put a mitigation plan in place.”
Really? Does a situation like this develop overnight?!
It took five months for HDC to ‘spring’ into action, first reported by the Care Group in March.
Eventually HDC wrote to a concerned citizen in July: “It is a difficult area to access, so remediation will not be easy, and given the likely extent of the issue the cost may be outside maintenance budgets. A report to Council is likely to be needed to obtain an appropriate budget allocation for the task.”
This citizen then sought Regional Council intervention, which was immediately forthcoming. It seems that CEOs, once alerted, don’t always need ‘reports to Council’. They just ‘have a cup of tea’ and get on with it.
And now there’s a reasonable remediation plan about to be undertaken.
Better late than never, we suppose.
So-called “vanity projects” or basic infrastructure – the dilemma facing the poor old councils – decisions, decisions – let’s go for the “vanity” – it always looks progressive and positive! Meanwhile silly little things like dumping of rubbish, pipelines etc just go on the backburner – after all the public don’t notice or know about these things – much better to have a nice new art work!