Kaipara development at important crossroad

The Kaipara District Council has advertised a position that is described as ‘development engineer’ in our rapidly growing and changing District. This job needs to encourage the team to think in global dimensions in order to find affordable sustainable local solutions. Our physical environment is deteriorating but the world’s leadership appears to have no strategies to enable mankind to live together in harmony and enjoy the astonishing loveliness of our natural world without destroying it.

To stay in power by dividing and ruling, whether at a national or a local level prevents the development of sustainable solutions to society’s problems. The critical skill for everyone involved in planning is constructive interaction. We must learn not to impute ill will to others just because their ideas are different from our own. When we treat others according to our worst view of their motives we will make them worse than they are. But when we treat them as what they potentially could be, we make them what they should be.

Here in Kaipara we are living in peace in a very rich country in the countryside near an exploding mega city. We have options!

We must adapt our decision-making processes to accommodate and integrate the diverse needs and wants of everyone. Kaipara’s development engineer will help to put the people in our villages, towns and communities back in charge of their own destiny. This is the basis for sustainable development. No one’s views will be asked for and then ignored. No one shall feel treated condescendingly or be made to feel that they are little children who must be told what to do by those in authority.

Modern infrastructure
Kaipara’s development engineer will promote the most modern efficient and affordable infrastructure based on the highest international best practice models.

Traffic
Pedestrians and cyclists need design priority. Traditional vehicle-centered traffic design where pedestrians and cyclists are just afterthoughts at best must give way to new strategies: It is important that children in our towns and villages have the opportunity to get themselves to and from school, sport, entertainment and their social engagements, safely and comfortably.

Kaipara’s development engineer will study and adopt emerging international developments for a rural public transport network such as an On Call Bus System”.

In the longer term common sense will prevail and the Marsden Point harbour will become a major transport hub. We need to revitalize and link up our railway to take advantage of the huge opportunities that are coming.

Town planning
The development engineer of Kaipara will help to protect a rural life style. We must strictly control population density and we must balance the need for public and common space against the use of land for private purposes.

Each significant subdivision proposal needs to be exposed to a public “brainstorming” process, so that every good idea that might get a better final result is heard and listened to.

Schools will be encouraged to provide their students with the tools so that they can bring their creative ideas for community development forward in the form of designs done by them.

Water health
Whether we like it or not dairy farming is by far the worst cause of water pollution. Farming must not be permitted to compromise our clean water. Clean water must be the bottom line non-negotiable basis of sustainable healthy farming.

We need to get serious about fencing off all of our streams and waterways, and doing the riparian planting that is essential to preventing the erosion and run-off of our precious soil. By good design and integration we can envisage walking and cycling tracks along the waterways which will create green tourism opportunities.

Waste water

More than the half of the human population worldwide is without any sanitary system. Faecally polluted water is the main reason for early child death, and chronic dysentery and diarrhea keep millions of people in poverty.

On a small scale quite a number of people in Kaipara have found simple efficient human waste treatment systems that convert their own waste to valuable fertiliser and irrigation water. They are developing an understanding of the life cycle that is absolutely fundamental to living sustainably in our physical world. We must now turn our attention urgently to develop modern affordable treatment systems for residential areas.

Organic holistic farming
There are many people in the District on the way to organic farming. Many people are enthusiastic about healthy local food, self-sufficiency, clean water.

The development engineer of Kaipara will create an information exchange about holistic organic farming, and foster the promotion of holistic farming strategies.

Work opportunities in Kaipara
While it is necessary to dream on a large scale to develop the vision, actual progress relies on taking small affordable constructive steps. But once we have created and agreed on the vision and we have established examples of sustainability, these better ways of developing our environment will spread to create the clean green world.

Community Councils
The development engineer of Kaipara will encourage and instigate the formation of Community Councils. We need to foster and facilitate the idea of “united independent communities of Kaipara.”