News release - Embargoed until 3pm Wednesday 7 November 2007

Winners of Greater Wellington’s inaugural Environmental Awards

The winners of Greater Wellington’s inaugural Environmental Awards were announced today.

Peter Glensor, Deputy Chair of Greater Wellington said, “Congratulations to all our winners, they have all done outstanding work on their projects and they deserve recognition for their hard work and commitment to the environment. Greater Wellington is working towards a sustainable region and we can’t do it without the help of our community, schools and businesses.”

Nga Uruora – Kapiti Project won the Rata Community Partnership Award for their outstanding effort in restoring native forest on the spectacular stretch of land between Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki. They have planted over 30,000 native trees and plants on the coastal escarpment as well as carrying out intensive weed and animal pest control programmes.

Muritai School was a double winner, taking home both the Miro School Sustainable Project Award and the Kahikatea School Leadership Award. They have been running their waste management programme for three years now, which includes composting, worm farms, and recycling. Stephen Eames, the leader of the Enviroschools Focus Team and Year 7 & 8 teacher; won the Kahikatea School Leadership Award for supporting and facilitating environmental sustainability throughout the school as well as encouraging parent and community involvement in the school’s environmental projects.

The Wellington Inner City Bypass project team won the Nikau Compliance Award for a resource consent holder going above and beyond the conditions of their consent. The project team includes Transit New Zealand, Opus International Consultants, Fulton Hogan and Wellington City Council. The team won for their innovative measures taken to deal with groundwater and the treatment of stormwater. There was a range of complicated - and potentially significant - environmental issues associated with this project that were very well managed within the constraints of a very confined site.

For more information on the awards programme go to www.gw.govt.nz/environmentalawards

For more information, please contact:
Caroline Salmon
Communications Adviser
Greater Wellington Regional Council
P 802 0310
E caroline.salmon@gw.govt.nz

Case studies

Rata Community Partnership Award:

Winner: Nga Uruora – Kapiti Project
Nga Ururoa – Kapiti Project won the Rata Community Partnership Award for their outstanding work restoring land on their flagship project on the spectacular stretch of coastline from Pukerua Bay to Paekakariki, on the escarpment between the main trunk railway line and the ridgeline.

The community group started out about 10 years ago, and with funding from Greater Wellington and the QE II trust, started their plan to have an unbroken ribbon of bird-safe native forest from Porirua to Waikanae, through both public and private land.

Their first job on the restoration project was to repair the ridgeline fence which had fallen into disrepair and was letting sheep graze on the native plants. After that difficult job of hauling fence post and digging post holes, the group moved onto removing assorted introduced invasive weeds, planting over 30,000 native plants and trees, and started an ongoing pest control programme aiming to make the escarpment free of possums, rats, mice, and stoats.

This year the group has also set up a bird monitoring group which go out to the escarpment every week to take note of the how many and what birds they see in the area. Since Kapiti Island is so close and that the habitat is being restored the monitoring group frequently see a profusion of native bird species such as waxeyes, kereru, grey warblers, tuis, harrier hawks as well as the usual suspects of the introduced species like blackbirds and pigeons. They have already noted some exciting finds, such as a couple of falcons, and just the other day one of them spotted a quail running through the underbrush.

Nga Ururoa is a true community project, with individuals from the community volunteering, local businesses providing supplies, and the native plant nurseries are at Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki primary schools, which also gives the students a chance to help out with planting the trees and plants – it gives everyone in the community a chance to be involved in the project whatever their age or physical ability.

Miro School Sustainable Project Award

Winner: Muritai School
Muritai School in Eastbourne is another fantastic contributor to the environment in the Wellington region, winning the Miro School Sustainable Project award for their outstanding commitment to their waste management programme. The students have set up a recycling station, compost bins, and worm farms and learnt about minimising waste in a bid to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill. This project has been going on in the school for three years now and it is promoted throughout the school by a very active Enviro-Group. The project keeps growing and continually developing over time and measures have been taken to make sure the process is sustainable in the long term.

Muritai School has been supported by Greater Wellington’s environmental education team, participating in the Take Action for Air and Take Action for Water programmes in the last two years. These programmes are an innovative and exciting way for school children to learn about, take responsibility, and understand the impact they, their families and communities have on the environment.

Merit award: Titahi Bay School
Titahi Bay School received a merit award for their ongoing sustainable transport initiatives after working with GW’s school travel plan co-ordinator. They were the first school in the Wellington region to work with GW to develop a school travel plan in November 2006.

The project aims to reduce the number of vehicles travelling to and from school and to ensure safe, sustainable and active modes of travel are available to their students. After doing a map exercise where the students marked their homes and travel mode on a large scale map and also noted any issues, such as dogs or dangerous crossings, they had with their journey to and from school. The school working party, which includes experts from the Police and Porirua City Council, developed a series of strategies to overcome the barriers to sustainable travel.

The initial survey of current travel choices showed that 60% of students arrived by car, but after going through the sustainable travel planning process, now around 75% of students are walking to school on a regular basis.

The programme co-ordinator at the school, Deputy Principal Kerry Delaney was also shortlisted for the Kahikatea School Leadership Award for her enthusiastic work on this project.

Kahikatea School Leadership Award

Winner: Stephen Eames, Muritai School
Leader of the Enviroschools Focus Team and Year 7 & 8 teacher, Stephen Eames won the Kahikatea School Leadership award for encouraging and facilitating environmental sustainability throughout the school. He has been instrumental in the school’s excellent progress towards the green/gold award for Enviroschools and has introduced small changes in a sustainable way to make sure all staff and students are involved; for example room 8 looks after the food waste bins, room 1 looks after the worm farms and all classes have paper recycling monitors.

He has encouraged parent and community involvement in the school’s environmental projects and developed relationships where the students work with external groups such as local businesses, Rotary, Forest and Bird, and Greater Wellington’s community environmental groups MIRO and Dune Restoration. The school’s Principal, Andrew Bird said “Stephen has a very supportive, facilitative style that creates channels for the students to succeed with their environmental initiatives.”

“This year, under Stephen’s leadership, has seen the waste management programme spread and into the learning context in every classroom”

Nikau Compliance Award

Winner: Wellington Inner City Bypass project team – Transit New Zealand, Opus International Consultants, Fulton Hogan, Wellington City Council
The Nikau Compliance Award is for a resource consent holder that has gone above and beyond the conditions of their resource consent. This award went to the Wellington Inner City Bypass project team for their innovative solutions to their many consent conditions, but principally their management of stormwater and groundwater consents.

Jeremy Rusbatch, one of the resource advisers assigned to this project, said “We saw the project team create innovative solutions to meet their consent conditions that we haven’t seen before. And it was all done on an extremely tight urban site”

“In particular, they converted a shipping container into a sediment discharge holding tank, because they didn’t have the space to dig holding ponds like other sites can, and we have never seen a holding tank like it.”

The holding tank was used to separate the water and soil sediment, and the clean water was pumped out the top once the sediment had fallen to the bottom of the tank.

“The project team has extensive conditions on lots of resource consents to manage, and they rose to the challenge. They came up with new designs, implemented and maintained them extremely well, kept us informed every step of the way, and were very proactive in their approach to their consents.” said Jeremy.

Merit: Capacity and Wellington Pipelines Ltd
Capacity and Wellington Pipelines Ltd won a joint merit award for their impressive work in resolving an erosion problem in the Takapu Stream. They had perfect textbook solutions to their consent conditions, working on the edge of the stream on a tricky small site with the added complication of a sewer line running through it.

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