Expressway Noise Recommendations – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

Vindication for Bernie Randall

The Jacobs report on peer reviewing NZTA’s noise mitigation on the Kapiti expressway has vindicated Paraparaumu/Raumati Community Board member Bernie Randall’s approach to the Human Rights Commission.

The report makes a number of important recommendations. “Six houses require mechanical ventilation to avoid opening their windows to loud expressway noise and this should be carried out without any delay owing to the hot summer,” said Mr Randall. (However people will have to pay for this ventilation!)

The report recommends, among other things, removing the rumble strips on the left hand edge lines along the urban part of the expressway and fixing approach surfaces to bridges to make them smoother.

Associate Minister urged to act on health grounds

Bernie’s calling on Julie Anne Genter the Associate Minister of Transport to urge NZTA to quickly implement the recommendations of the report.

The Minister should also urge Standards New Zealand (NZS) to immediate carry out a revision of NZS 6806 the road noise standard as the current standard does not appear to be fit for purpose.

The home is literally the centre of the primary health system.

When homeowners experience disturbed sleep this causes stress, reduced work efficiency and poor life quality, according to Mr Randall.

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti Coast councillors have toured of one of Aotearoa's unique buildings, the heritage - listed Rotunda at the former Otaki Health Camp, the country’s first.

Jeremy Smith reports that the 105-year-old, eight-sided rotunda predates the Health Camp.

It wasn't actually built in Otaki, but was one of two built in Rotorua in 1915 as part of a military hospital, on the site of Rotorua’s present public hospital.

Later they were taken to Otaki for the opening of the health camp in 1931.

Full story in the main column (December 19).

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.