Money down the drain
CBD streetscape upgrade’s natural stormwater system to cost $13m
The organiser of a charity boxing match in Napier died in a car crash on the eve of the event.
Battle For Life promoter and trainer Patrick Tama O’Brien, from Flaxmere, and retired farmer Tony Anderson, from Napier, were killed in a two-car crash on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway on Friday afternoon.
O’Brien, also a former Hawke’s Bay basketballer and a world champion kickboxer, was the driving force behind the charity Battle For Life, which was cancelled in light of his death.
The match, which had been scheduled for last night, was in its tenth year and was to be a fundraiser for suicide awareness after a former participant took his life this year.
Tributes on Facebook described O’Brien as a selfless and caring man — a “life-changer” — who was well regarded in the community. He was also a loving husband and father to his two sons.
A resident who heard the fatal collision on Friday described a “heavy bang” from State Highway 2 and then a woman’s cry.
“She cried out like when you have lost someone important and you are hurt,” she said. “I felt shocked. It was very hard to hear the distress, my heart went out to the woman and her family.”
Police arrived at the crash on the expressway between the Kennedy Rd onramp and intersection with Taradale Rd at 1.35pm.
Hastings District Councillor Henare O’Keefe had known O’Brien for more than a decade and said he and his wife Theresa’s gym, called The Lab, was about improving lives.
They worked extensively alongside disadvantaged youth, individuals and families, he said.
The tangi at Te Aranga marae will begin today.
“We’ll get things ready here and then we’ll be able to talk and cry together and laugh together and share stories of Patrick,” O’Keefe said.
“No matter where you have this funeral, it’s not going to be big enough. They will just pour into the marae,” he said.
The cost of Auckland’s Quay St streetscape enhancement has blown out by $13 million in the past year because of an unbudgeted raingarden stormwater system.
The Quay St construction began in December 2018 with a budget of $59.2m and has reduced the four-lane arterial CBD route running parallel to the harbour to a single lane each way.
In August, Auckland Transport announced 19 rain-garden systems containing 200 native trees would be installed along Quay St. The po¯hutukawa and other natives filter stormwater run-off flows before they reach the sea. However, the increased cost to $72.15m was not mentioned at the time.
“Due to a request from Auckland Council stormwater and iwi to provide enhanced levels of stormwater treatment via a series of rain gardens, extra funding was required to deliver improved stormwater and pollution control outcomes,” AT’s downtown programme director, Eric Van Essen, said this week.
Another contributor to the $13m increase was some components of the planned Britomart East Bus Interchange having to be built by the Quay St project, to the west of the intersection with Commerce St intersection, Van Essen said.
Auckland Council’s finance committee chairwoman, Desley Simpson, said organisations like AT had to remember they were spending ratepayer money and their decisionmaking needed “a lot more transparency”.
“Some people are going to say a garden that costs $13m is exorbitant and that’s understandable. It’s a huge amount. [However] that figure isn’t all garden. It’s a natural stormwater filter that will improve water quality aiming to allow people to swim in the Viaduct Basin, costing about the same as an engineered system, which would just have pushed the contaminated overflows into the harbour.”
Auckland Council’s general manager of healthy waters, Craig Mcilroy, said the existing stormwater system had been “reaching the end of its useful life” but there had been little room on Quay St before the enhancement project to construct additional stormwater infrastructure.
Mcilroy indicated consultation with mana whenua was the catalyst to add the rain-garden system, and council’s healthy waters department contributed $6m to the total $13m rain gardens cost.
Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance spokeswoman Jo Holmes said AT should be “hauled over the coals” for a $13m blowout “equivalent to the annual rates bill for almost 4000 Auckland homes”.
Van Essen confirmed the Quay St work was on schedule to be completed by December next year, in time for the 2021 America’s Cup.