Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whātua are filing court action against the proposed contentious Dome Valley dump in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Dome Valley, north of Auckland. Photo: The Wireless / Luke McPake
The appeal in the Environment Court is alongside another by residents battling the dump north of Auckland.
Last month, independent commissioners granted the landfill a conditional resource consent - iwi and community groups opposed it on cultural and environmental grounds.
Waste Management was granted resource consent for a 60 hectare dump in the Wayby Valley, adjacent to the Dome Valley and about 5km from Warkworth.
According to the decision document, the majority of commissioners saw the tip would provide vital infrastructure as the city expanded and the amount of rubbish produced grew with it.
The commissioners were also satisfied any ecological and environmental impacts could be managed.
The sole commissioner that opposed the tip was chairperson Sheena Tepaina.
She believed the impact on the area's ecology and cultural value to Māori would be significantly adverse if it went ahead, and that Te Tiriti o Waitangi had not been sufficiently taken into account.
A map of the proposed dump in Dome Valley from a Waste Management brochure. Photo: Waste Management
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whatua chief executive Alan Riwaka said it now had solid grounds under the Resource Management Act to file the appeal.
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whātua represents approximately 20,000 people throughout Auckland, Northland and Aotearoa and represents hapū and marae within the iwi of Ngāti Whātua, who descend from the tūpuna, Haumoewarangi, and other recognised tūpuna.
"A landfill in this location would challenge the relationship that mana whenua have with their lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga, and their kaitiakitanga role in respect of protecting the awa and whenua," Riwaka said.
"The landfill's presence will clearly and irrevocably diminish that relationship and will seriously limit the ability to exercise kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga consistent with our tikanga, culture and traditions."
The appeal states that the proposal approved does not meet the thresholds within the RMA and it believes the "overall broad judgment" approach to the Auckland Unitary Plan provisions was the wrong legal test.
Accordingly, it understood there was no jurisdiction to approve the proposal, which resulted in significant adverse cultural, biodiversity, sedimentation, stream and watercourse effects, as well as unacceptable or inappropriate risks to the values and the natural environment.
As a result, Te Rūnanga ō Ngāti Whātua will seek cancellation of the landfill consents.
If that could not be achieved, then it would seeking substantial changes to the conditions to recognise that a regional landfill had lasting effects over hundreds of years and would require substantial cultural and biodiversity mitigation and offsetting to address the adverse cultural, biodiversity and other effects on Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whātua, their hapū, marae, and the wider environment.