House on volcanic cone plan buys fight
Defenders of Auckland’s volcanic cones are fighting a Karaka man’s plan to build his dream home atop a big previously undiscovered volcano.
Wayne Valder, who owns the Karaka property, wants to construct a five-bedroom house with a basement and driveway on the site.
Valder had been working on the plans since purchasing the land in 2014.
An Auckland Council spokeswoman said five submissions had been lodged against the application.
A planner assigned to the consent application would begin to assess each submission early next week.
Any issues raised would be included in a report on the application, which would recommend the next steps.
One of the submissions, filed by the Auckland Volcanic Cones society, recommended rejecting Valder’s application.
Spokesman Greg Smith described Valder’s plans as being “considerable” in size.
The site needed further surveying to assess the value of its landscape and geography, he said.
“This volcano is like the elephant in the room — I mean it’s so big you can’t see it.”
The size and nature of the volcano contributed to its rather late discovery, according to geologist Bruce Hayward.
Earlier this year Hayward was contracted by Auckland Council to survey the site after some Karaka locals raised questions about a rumoured volcano.
Hayward said he was “absolutely staggered” when he discovered an old degraded “castle and moat” volcano, by using high-tech scanning and onsite mapping.
Hayward said the find was rare — it was the first of its kind to be recognised for more than a century.
“There is an explosion crater with a tuff ring around the outside, and in the inside it’s got a scoria cone,” he said.
“The cone in the middle is surrounded by a moat, so it’s a castle with a moat around it and then a ring of ash around that.”
Smith urged council to put considerable time and effort into ensuring the natural feature was protected as much as possible.
When initially contacted by the Weekend Herald, Valder said the discovery was a surprise which was problematic to his plans.
After speaking to his lawyer, he declined to comment further about either his resource consent application or the volcano.