April 19, 2016
Expressway work wins award for Waikato Tainui
Waikato Tainui’s work with Opus International Consultants and the NZ Transport Agency has been acknowledged in this year's New Zealand Planning Institute awards.
The trio's mitigation plan for the Hamilton section of the Waikato Expressway won the Best Practice Commendation award for Consultation and Participation Strategies and Processes.
The plan seeks to not only mitigate any negative cultural effects of the massive build but also to reconnect affiliated Waikato-Tainui hapu with land that has been alienated from them for over 150 years, since the raupatu of the 1860s.
Judges said it set a new benchmark for addressing cultural effects on large-scale projects that can easily be applied to other planning processes.
They said it’s an example of the sort of increased Maori involvement that the latest reforms to the Resource Management Act seek to encourage.
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