As the government continues to push to fast-track its unfunded mega highway through central Wellington, affected homeowners, residents, businesses, schools, and experts need to be heard, says Save the Basin spokesperson, Ross Teppett
The Environmental Protection Authority has accepted a New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) application to build the highway meaning an expert panel must now be established to consider whether the project should be granted a consent.
“This project, if consented, will have an enormous destructive and disruptive impact on people and places across our city over many years, so it’s absolutely critical government affords those affected the chance to have their say on the proposal,” says Mr Teppett.
“The impacts on local communities like significant noise and vibration from tunnel blasting and stopping walking and cycling through the Mt Victoria tunnel for up to three years must be considered as well as the long-term impacts of bringing more cars into the city.”
Save the Basin says expert panel members must be made up of people who will ask NZTA hard questions, and that they also invite affected people and experts to a public hearing given the significant and lasting impacts this project would have on the city.
“Right now, NZTA have put in a 4000-page fast-track application that reads more like a public relations exercise full of untested assumptions and over optimistic claims. This is why its evidence must be rigorously tested by experts,” said Mr Teppett.
“And it’s outrageous this project has got to this stage without any confirmed funding for its construction. Experience shows construction costs will balloon beyond the current estimated $3 Billion price tag and it’ll be drivers and ratepayers who end up helping pay for it through excess tolling and levies.”