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The Environment Court has extended the area covered by consent conditions at the controversial Waiheke marina project but the action won’t be enough to stop the work.
Members of Protect Pūtiki are now in the sixth day of occupying a floating building platform at the Pūtiki Bay site.
Last week Ngāti Pāoa Trust Board asked the court for an interim enforcement order to stop Kennedy Harbour Boatharbour Limited from working on a breakwater unless a suitable plan was in place to protect the resident kororā or little blue penguins.
It pointed to what it said were shortcomings in the plan approved by Auckland Council.
Judge Laurie Newhook said the court was not going to relitigate the consent or interfere with the council’s certification of the kororā plan.
It could however clarify that the reference in the consent to “within or adjacent to the construction area” meant not just the small area on the breakwater where kororā nests were found before the 2018 resource consent hearing but the whole of the southern face of the breakwater and the foreshore at the north-eastern end of the beach.
Ecologists have identified at least 34 kororā nests or burrows along the beach and breakwater.
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