Planning brave new Mahurangi tide-head town
Five-times-greater population pretty much means Warkworth will be a new town
Sunday Sunset Boulevard town-hall matinee idyll
In a former life, J Barry Ferguson, amongst many things, was “the garden curator of Greenacre Park on 51st Street Manhattan, a private ‘vest-pocket’ park, open to everyone and owned by the Rockefeller Greenacre Foundation.” Having been florist and event organiser to New York’s…
Strikingly unfit for fossil-fuel-free future
Anthropogenic climate disruption is not just another issue. It is the issue that will bedevil generation after generation for at least hundreds of years. Just how hard and how fast global warming will impact cannot be accurately quantified, given that…
Seriously steeling the green network backbone
Whether the green network proposed in the Draft Warkworth Structure Plan is fit-for-purpose for this week’s climate-striking school students, for their next 30 years, must be the question. And given that streets, once surveyed, tend to endure, the…
Seriously serial structure plan submission
There is much to applaud and support in Warkworth’s draft structure plan. Submissions are invited, as is statutorily required, prior to the final stages, labelled “Changes to Structure Plan and Adoption” or, as the text explains, “Following consultation…
Super Masonic solution to blank riverbank wall
Mahurangi Magazine has stuck its neck out by soliciting support for its suggested solution to the ugly butt of the Old Masonic Hall. The timing was poor. Six days before Christmas meant that most folk missed the email and, as of this morning, only…
Drop-in drops solution to Old Masonic derriere dilemma
Its arse-end is one of Warkworth’s worst features, despite robust heritage architecture being about striving to keep public buildings relevant to their communities. Nothing about the blank back wall of the Old Masonic Hall commends it to be considered…
Millrace to the rescue of whitebait and weir
Millennia before human habitation, the natural sandstone weir at the Mahurangi River tidehead would have formed a formidable barrier to īnanga in their imperative to migrate from the sea to freshwater reaches. Then, over about the last 6000 years, towards…
Arising from ashes of the Phoenix
Better connecting its tidehead town to its river has been a Mahurangi Action goal, since the organisation was formed 44 years and a fortnight ago. Understandably, for a forward-looking town, Warkworth was built with its back to the river that represented…
Near-certainty of 66-metre sea-level rise
Permanent ice sheets are a misnomer. Ages involving alternating glacial and interglacial periods are ephemeral, occupying only a small percentage of geological time. Humankind’s greatest—although certainly not in any laudatory…
Town-hall talks back with Professor Bill McKay
As befits the stellar success of the last town-hall talk, before finances forced a two-month hiatus, the series is back to stay. August’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk, by Dr Andrew Jeffs, has spawned a five-year, potentially $1 million, research project aimed at…
Future Mahurangi transport network feedback
Mahurangi Action’s feedback pro forma on Warkworth’s future transport network is good to go. Members, and readers generally, are warmly encouraged to use the pro forma as-is or as a starting point for their own feedback, and to put their oars in…
This might have been one more for the roads
September’s town-hall talk is now cancelled, and possibly the balance of this year’s. The September slot was pencilled in for the topic of paedophilia awareness—apparently paedophile networks operate locally—but no subsequent response was…
Hobsonville-pointing satellite growth centre
While it was all about density, it said more about the limitations of developer-led planning. Presenting this month’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk, Mark Fraser, precinct manager for hlc, detailed the lengths necessary to dissuade builders from building…
Reimagining the roads of Mahurangi
Roads, historically, were not about cars. They were not even about private vehicles, until the last 100 of human civilisation’s 5500-year existence. So perhaps the Labour Party’s pandering to Penlink is understandable, as it seeks to wrest more of the...
Topic-paper feedback as submitted
With the input of members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, Mahurangi Action has submitted feedback on the structure plan topic papers to Auckland Council. In order that the preparation of the be totally transparent…
Topic-paper feedback closes – Keep calm and carry on
Mahurangi Action has frantically prepared feedback to enable members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, to quickly email a comprehensive submission to Auckland Council. This is a work in progress, but the target was to…
Structure plan topic-paper switchboard
In an ideal world, everybody interested would have time to read the Warkworth Structure Plan consultation documents. But those just issued run to a total of 623 topic pages and maps. Between the first call for feedback and the 23 April deadline…
Now the commission wants to explore
At least Ōrewa is equally inconvenient for all Rodney residents. In its case for twin local board areas, the Mahurangi Magazine pointed out: So disparate are the areas, that meetings of the Rodney Local Board are held in Ōrewa, which is in neither half. Now…
Triggering automatic change to green
Most Warkworthians are unhappy that their town is now a satellite growth centre. Had a concerted campaign been waged against it, and unlimited funds spent fighting it, Auckland Council may have been forced to rethink. But that would not have…
Warkworth, the watershed, and the whitebait
Mahurangi was always going to need all the help it could get. When, in 2004, the then Auckland Regional Council announced a $3 million, 5-year kickstart to address the harbour’s elevated sediment accumulation rate, Mahurangi Action was advised…
Unlocking the magic of Warkworth
Warkworth’s population of 4000 is estimated to reach 27 000 in the next 30 years. Without relentless optimism, on the strength of international experience Warkworth-as-a-satellite-growth-centre is a recipe for a sprawling, Geography of Nowhere…
Twin tweaks to conquer local-democracy deficit
Status quo would be the less satisfactory option. Corner to corner, the Rodney Local Board area stretches 86 kilometres—a 165-kilometre, 2-hour drive by road, plus at least an hour’s walk at either end. In the context of an area of nearly 87 000 hectares, local board is an…
Town hall planning to return favour
By 2019, many of the decisions about the new Warkworth could be being made in its old town hall. The Local Government Commission is currently considering reorganisation options for the Auckland region, including an alternative proposal made by…
About-face for future Warkworth
Old Warkworth turned its back on the Mahurangi River. Although an egregious act of disrespect, Warkworth settlers were forward-looking Victorians, wedded to smart coaches and fast trains. The river had utility, but steamboats were a yesterday’s…
Riverpath puts Warkworth in league of its own
If measured in leagues, it’d be fewer than 1.3 of them. While it can take an eternity by road, particularly in holiday traffic, the six-kilometre path between Warkworth and Snells Beach, following the Mahurangi River, takes cyclists an average of about 25 minutes. Many…
Portals could power town-basin transformation
Warkworth doesn’t boast of much of a town basin. Topographically, the tidal Mahurangi River terminates in a bit of a tight squeeze, compared with, for example, Whangārei. But what Warkworth lacks by way of a commodious tidal headwater…
Mahurangi River Town Basins, Landings and Navigation Plan
The Mahurangi River Town Basins, Landings and Navigation Plan broadly involves: 1.) Dredging within the Warkworth town basin to restore the ability of visiting boats to remain afloat throughout the tidal cycle; 2.) Dredging parts of the channel of the…
Energy and the dammed Mahurangi
Dam the Mahurangi River and generate electricity. Such a proposal would face fierce opposition. But what if the dam was already in place; built more than a century since. The dam, otherwise known as the Wilson cement works weir, is located almost…
Walks in, around and beyond Warkworth worth walking
They’re billed as Warkworth Walks Worth Doing, though only one is actually in or around Warkworth. There are seven, ranging from the relatively rigorous, to the summit of Tamahunga, to the trattoria-style Italian dinner at Herons Flight…
Forum flies through first big test
Sewage brings out the worst in people, and the worst people out. Although that is deliberately trite, sewerage proposals are legendary for eliciting the ‘not in my backyard’ response. It was easy in 1974. The Warkworth town council imposed a flawed scheme…
Is planning Rodney sprawling Rodney?
Planning Rodney looks like a plan. Much of the hydrological catchment is shown in a Kaipara–Mahurangi green buffer—the largest of three that would stretch from coast to coast. North of this green buffer is the northeastern mixed activity area, in a band that…
Warkworth town-centre upgrade submission
The proposed upgrade is a prime opportunity to develop the potential of one of Warkworth’s unique strategic assets—the Mahurangi River—with a cornerstone development at Wharf Street to form the heart of a new riverfront boutique retail precinct…
Their way and the highway bypass
It’s all on for the riverside town. The proposed town centre upgrade and now a proposed district plan change. The council’s explanation is that the proposed plan change comes out of Warkworth’s structure plan and would “maintain the present boutique…
Brainstorming breakfast gets to meet David Hay
The topics discussed at the Mahurangi brainstorming breakfasts are many and varied: governance of the region; restoration of indigenous forest; indigenous forestry; reduction of sediment generation; and the opportunities for Warkworth…
Meeting to form Transition Town Warkworth
No doubt you are aware of climate change. Maybe you have heard of peak oil. But what can you do? Peak oil and climate change will drastically change the way we live. Food, transport and energy costs are predicted to soar. Weather patterns…